Trapdoor
by Andrea Weiling
Summary: AU, shounen ai, CloudxKadaj. Cloud Strife works as head of his department in ShinRa Company to support his three adopted brothers: Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz. The mafia Turks, however, have a whole different lifestyle planned for him.
1. You Weren't Supposed To Fall Into It

Trapdoor (Part 1)

by anza (07.11.05)

It started with one lively song. Cloud barely recognized it was no one but his brother that he was whirling around the living room floor. A half-smile was playing around his lips, trembling there as if waiting for him to set it loose from its cage in all its glory, but on his brother's lips there was a full smile and set of white teeth, egging him on. "You're doing _fine_," Kadaj insisted, and laughed when his face turned downward to their feet. "No looking at your feet! You'll never learn to sense what I'm going to do next that way."

His brother's green eyes sparkled, and Cloud felt uplifted yet plummeted so suddenly he was sure a trapdoor had opened beneath his feet to vanish him into unseen depths. The snatch of attraction in that faint, split-second moment could not bode well.

And then the music stopped, and Kadaj was hugging him with the exuberance of his seventeen-year-old self, a teenager whose older brother had _finally_ gotten himself a girlfriend (and potential housekeeper; as the youngest of the four, Kadaj always kept house in the frilly pink apron that Yazoo found was great for blackmail shots if Kadaj ever got too uppity). "You'll do great," he smiled up at Cloud, and something sharp and painful twisted in Cloud's chest. "You and Tifa will be talk of the dance, Cloud."

Cloud. That name, the way it rolled off his lips. Cloud detached himself gently with a murmur of thanks without meeting his brother's bright eyes.

He did not want to dance with Tifa, he realized. He wanted to spin Kadaj in his arms forever and ever, closer and closer...

----------

The dance went horribly.

They started alright, the two of them. Tifa was drop-dead gorgeous in a deep purple, form-hugging number that showed everyone in the room how inadequate their own dates (and wives, as this was a company party) were. Cloud was speechless with wonder for the first few minutes, wondering how THIS Tifa could be the same Tifa that threw barstools at customer's heads when they were getting too rowdy. Or the time she'd stabbed someone with a pencil because he tried to grope her. Or the time she'd taken the empty metal cashbox and smashed it over a client's head because he tried to steal a bottle of scotch over the counter.

But on the dance floor, they drew close to each other during a slow dance, and Tifa muttered degrading and hilarious comments about all the dancers around them, exaggerating rumors about people she knew and then spinning horrendous yarns about the people she didn't. Cloud took all of her talk with a grain of salt, and she knew it. Her eyes were so deep and so soulful, he wanted to fall and fall forever. So many times, he had to stop himself from leaning closer. But just before he moved, the back of his mind would jolt and he would return to the living room, remembering the glimmer of Kadaj's eyes and how they made him float above all the rest of the world. Tifa's eyes pulled him in, consumed him slowly with the marvelously warm fire of her heart; Kadaj lifted him, pushed him away even while his hands scrabbled to bring him closer.

She was so peaceful, Tifa. He wanted to lean his head on her shoulder forever. But he couldn't dance with her for more than a few songs. Feeling the curves of her body against his, he would find himself blushing for all the wrong reasons. For a moment, the touch of her hair against his chin smelled like Kadaj's. For a moment, her hand tightened like Kadaj's would when Cloud accidentally stepped on his feet. For a moment, when someone knocked her and she was right there, flush against him -

- the dance ended fine. He smiled at the end of the night and knew he would marry her when the time came. She was the mother/sister the other three were looking for. She was a life's companion that he could stand living with all of eternity. Her patience, her caring, her gentility, her morality - yes. Yes.

His heart went out to her. She'd been so wonderful and yet the entire night, he wasn't able to think of her. His mind was back home, throwing popcorn at Loz and running his hands through Yazoo's long hair while he dozed in his lap, the changing colors of the TV screen showing whatever movie was on with glaring pixels and the rat-tat-tat! of their favorite action films. Sometimes, Kadaj would wordlessly go into the kitchen and come out with a beer for his favorite older brother. Sometimes, Cloud would give him a sip, and watch as Kadaj's cheeks flushed with color, eyes hazy and swimming with love.

He shook his head. He would just have to stay away from Tifa for the next few days. He didn't want to be caught accidently shooting her sympathetic looks.

----------

The TV was still blaring an action flick when he turned the key in the lock. Yazoo had fallen completely over on their squashy, second-hand couch, snoring on a pillow in lieu of Cloud's lap. Loz was no better; he had sunk completely to the floor, barely avoiding hitting his head against the leg of the coffee table by leaning against the couch. Only Kadaj was still awake, watching the TV with an intensity that would have been frightening for anyone else except for their dysfunctional little family. Cloud knew he was thinking of what major he was going to declare himself on the college apps. Seventeen-year-olds had their own problems.

"Tadaima," he murmured softly to the three, even though only one was awake. Loz stirred uncomfortably; Yazoo slept on like a rock. Kadaj's shimmering hair whirled to frame his face perfectly as he turned to face his brother. Wordlessly he took Cloud's coat and the souvenir wine glass that came with the ticket (Tifa had gotten one too), setting the coat aside and taking the wine glass into the kitchen. While Cloud fought a brief war with his tie (Kadaj was the only one in the family that knew how to tie ties; hopefully he could teach Tifa sometime so he wouldn't be stuck with a loose tie during work), Kadaj came back with a cup of water and three cookies.

At Cloud's curious look, he explained softly, "We made them earlier as a surprise. I just pulled them out five minutes ago, so they're still warm." His eyes reflected the moving pictures on the television screen, mirroring the intensity of the fight going on, and Cloud looked away after a moment. Carefully he bit into a cookie, the peanut butter flavor crumbling down his throat, and he smiled. It was indeed still warm.

"Is it good?" Kadaj's eyes were expectant.

"Would you kill me if I said no?"

"Yes." But Kadaj's eyes were crinkled up, and his smile was genuine as he said it. Cloud reached out before he realized, and pressed the palm of his hand right against the top of his youngest brother's head. They were as normal as they could be for geniuses. It wasn't their fault they were born so smart they received their Ph.Ds all at age twelve. It showed in their older brother, though Cloud wasn't really their brother but a cousin. Cloud, too, was a genius, and had risen to head of his department in the Shin-Ra Company despite his young age of twenty-seven.

Ten years between them. He didn't want to think about that.

He ate the other two cookies and got up to get more. Kadaj got to his feet a little quickly and brought back five. Together they watched the movie until the ending credits rolled. There was a moment right when the last scene faded out and the ending credit song had just begun when Cloud felt, if Kadaj was older and not a relative, he would have leaned over and kissed him, Tifa or no Tifa. As it was, his grip only tightened a little on his cookie as he crunched it down, then drank a large gulp of water.

"Nii-san?" He forgot how sensitive Kadaj was.

"It's nothing."

"How'd the dance go?"

A sour taste in his mouth. "It went great. The dance steps you showed me really worked, Kadaj."

A pause between them, stretching, yawning into the depth of the trapdoor below. _That's why it's called a trapdoor_, Cloud reminded himself. _You're not supposed to fall into it._

But Kadaj's eyes were on his again, piercing and knowing all at once, and the warm of his hand was so near that Cloud could have easily crossed the distance between them and placed his hand on his brother's. He imagined running his thumb over the smooth knuckles, smoothing the soft of his palm, tracing the lines and the fingers, and then bringing it up to his mouth so he could press his lips gently there, right in the middle of the palm. It would have been sacred, something secret between the two of them, a tenderness. He could have passed it off for brotherly love. Kadaj wouldn't have said anything.

"Nii-san?" The voice was softer this time, more persuasive. He could hear the subtle worry under it.

Cloud stood abruptly, chomping the rest of the last cookie down in one gulp. "It's nothing," he murmured, his words punctuated by a particularly noisy snore from Loz. He found the courage to meet Kadaj's eyes, and found he wasn't scared. Kadaj's eyes were familiar to him after so many years, and right now they were only worried. He had been afraid they would mirror the same desire his held.

Seventeen-year-olds had too many things to worry about already.

He gave a wry, tired smile. So very tired. "It's really nothing, Kadaj." And in that moment, he forced himself to believe it.


	2. I Only Take Geniuses

Trapdoor (Part 2)

by anza (08.11.05)

"You're being stupid," Sephiroth said with absolute certainty. His green eyes - so similar to Kadaj's! - flickered upward from where he was tuning his guitar to meet Cloud's. The blonde shrank back a little; they'd worked together for the longest time now, yet Sephiroth always had an air of authority and discipline that exuded no matter where he was nor what he was doing. Even now, as he strummed a chord (B major, Cloud noted absently), his thigh-length hair almost touching the floor, he was relaxed and yet still strung tautly. Cloud was reminded of a bow, the arrow hopefully pointed somewhere other than his head...

"And why's that?"

"You're determined not to change your relationship with the boys, right? You won't, not if you want to enough. Just succeed, and everything will be fine." Sephiroth had the right to care; he was a closer cousin than Cloud was, but deemed himself 'unfit' to adopt the boys when their parents died. There was a scandal that ruled him out of that decision - something with his pretty secretary, her name started with an "Ae-"? - and by default the court dropped responsibility onto Cloud's head like an unwelcome rainstorm.

He had to admit he overestimated them, those three displaced boys that stared up so hopefully at him at his front door that day. He expected them to be running around, making trouble for him everywhere, proverbially turning the house upside down (and sometimes, he realized they still could) - but he found his own perchance for practical jokes and pranks in his youth served to his advantages. He learned to know the look and the mild flick of Kadaj's hand that signaled a prank was in process, and that Cloud could either stay to watch or he could stop it (and risking three sulking boys for the rest of the week). Most times he watched; the brothers always picked good targets and pulled some spectacular ones before. The school bullies, the disliked teacher, the snobby slut - these were their targets. When the principal called Cloud in with one or all of the boys in tow, Cloud feigned innocence. No idea at all. Yes, of course he would scold them later.

Afterwards, he jotted the details into his diary and shared it with his closer collegues. Sometimes he would hear exploits later of Tseng's errant nephew attaching a tea set complete with table, chairs, and food onto the ceiling, or Tifa's second cousin found guilty of hanging the dorm's most annoying boy from the top bunk with miles and miles of dental floss. Other times, Rufus Shinra himself would come down from the thirty-fourth floor of his private office to demand if Cloud was the one who put the idea of painting his walls pink with rainbows into Reno's head. The guilty party always winked his left eye at Cloud. After Rufus stormed off to find the building's janitors, Cloud would blink back innocently.

But other than the pranks (and they were sure to never play them on Cloud; he was their darling older brother and the almighty supplier of their allowance), they were nice kids, if not overly smart ones. Cloud received a report the second week they'd transferred that Kadaj had solved an equation faster than the teacher had. It was fortunate the teacher thought it was amazing, not deficient to his authority. It was cruel, but Cloud told the boys to be stupid. Smart as they were, ironically they played dumb well. There were no more incidents, though Cloud was sure they each had their own private encounters.

"It's not that easy," he argued, but his voice trailed off. Perhaps it was that easy. Perhaps pushing it away was that easy.

Sephiroth finished tuning the guitar and plugged it into the synth. A blazing riff rippled forth and filled the little garage with sound. From the side alley Yazoo gave a whoop. A moment later something crashed and Cloud heard Loz cursing creatively. "You'd better stop hanging out with Cid," he admonished, but Loz only gave him a wry grin, hefting the largest drum in his arms.

They set up briskly. Cloud debated whether he should pull out his guitar; the boys _had_ been good lately, and he rather missed jamming with his old band. But Tifa was the owner and bartender of her own bar, and Vincent was halfway across the world, studying ancient war strategies and weapons in the East. Cid was Loz's employer and sponsor, and the only one who Cloud heard about all the time, though Tifa was starting to enter the picture again. He could picture his own guitar, lying in its case in the back of his closet, its red and white starting to gather dust.

"Nii-san," Kadaj called out. The youngest's eyes were brimming with hope. "Please?"

He couldn't say no when three pairs of green eyes looked at him quite like THAT. With a sigh, he dragged the guitar out, tuned and plugged it in as the other four started practice on the songs they already knew.

They weren't serious, the four (and sometimes five) of them. Sephiroth and Cloud were both high-profile executives in Shin-Ra Company, and the other three, though adequate, weren't enough to make a good band. Sure, Kadaj's voice was so malleable and duplicitous that he would make a nice, sexy idol for girls to scream over during three-hour concerts and four-month world tours, but Cloud wasn't sure he could handle the stress of having all three of them away from him at once. He was at least used to having Kadaj at home all the time; Yazoo came back from university every two weekends and all the holidays; Loz checked in every Tuesday after testing out the latest aircraft equipment Cid designed and sold. Their family hadn't broken up completely, but Cloud was finding it hard to give up what little connection they shared in six years of brotherhood.

Six years was a long time too, he was finding. But all children left home someday. He just wished he really was their brother, so all of their childhoods would belong to him too.

He struck the strings so hard the others stared at him in amazement. But Kadaj only grinned, and launched into song. Through slitted eyes Cloud watched the youngest sway as if mesmerized by the song, hands caressing the microphone stand. Flinching, he turned away, his hands desperately scrambling for notes that would describe the voice of his conflicting soul. They rang true, and Kadaj's voice turned keen and pleading, the song arching towards a climax. Cloud broke into the interlude with a sparkling solo, hearing more than feeling the song grate against the leaden stone in place of his heart. When they were done, they were all panting hard, Loz turning to stare at his oldest brother increduously.

"Why'd you go so _fast_," he grumbled. Cloud threw him a towel, and he wiped the sweat that had beaded on his forehead. Yazoo took the time to shrug off his sweatshirt. Kadaj, in a black ensemble topped with silver jewelry ("There's no one to see us anyway," Cloud had heard Yazoo tell the youngest earlier. "Why're you all dressed up?"), clinked as he sashayed over to him.

"Nii-san," he said playfully, "what was THAT all about?"

Dumbly, Cloud heard himself say, "Huh?"

"You're not venting the missed chance of kissing Tifa at the dance, are you?" He'd heard all about the dance the next day, after he'd pestered Cloud for an entire morning while they tidied up the house.

Without permission, Cloud smiled almost challengingly. "No," he answered simply and took a seat on the amp.

Kadaj leaned against the other side. On the side, the other three were listening to the recording of the song. But somehow, now that the torment of the song was over, he had settled down back into his skin, contemplating the energy he'd conjured in his notes. Like always, Kadaj sensed that. "Nii-san," he said softer, "nii-san, won't you practice with us more? It's more fun when you're jamming with us."

Sephiroth's words rippled stormily through Cloud's head like an impending earthquake. Placing his hand on Kadaj's head briefly, he clasped his guitar and wandered dreamily out of the room, feeling the youngest's eyes boring into his back.

----------

If he'd known he spent two years in college and another year in graduate school to prepare him to file paperwork, he wouldn't have spent the time and the money. He _was_ flattered, of course - "I only take geniuses," Rufus Shinra had declared when he took over the company from his father - but as his secretary had called sick and there were somehow no replacements in the entire sixty-two floor building (not including the five story parking garage beside it - which all the employees found woefully inadequate. Thankfully the bottom floor was reserved for executives such as Cloud himself), Cloud found himself filing paperwork. It was a job that he hadn't done in 7 years. Like a foot soldier, he'd started from grunt work and worked his way up to the top. People asked him how. He only replied he had the right sense to act at the right times.

Once, Kadaj had teasingly asked him who he bribed. Cloud couldn't say he _did_ bribe anyone, but it _did_ hit a little too close to home. In the end when he opened his eyes and found himself head of his department, with all the days of being commanded by someone other than Rufus Shinra over, he was as surprised as anyone else. It had all seemed a great boiling soup of people and places and names and money, sometimes here and sometimes there. In the end, he hadn't bribed any one person - donations to organizations worked better, once he made a little name for himself.

"Tifa called. I think she wants to get together sometime," Yazoo's voice drawled through the answering machine when he returned to his office. He listened to the background pandemonium of pots and pans clashing as Loz and Kadaj fought over who was to cook dinner ("I can cook better than you, dimwit!" "Nii-san likes my food better! Let's not _completely_ waste his money, shall we?") while he stared out the window and tried not to smile too widely. It wasn't good for his image if someone saw him giggling in his office for no apparent reason.

With a yawn he closed up for the day. It was an hour commute back to the suburbs, and he didn't want to be late. Though Loz's birthday wasn't for two weeks, it was good to be home on Tuesdays. Yazoo's school had let out early for some important holiday; they all seemed to blend into his head at this hour. Kadaj was still slaving over college apps - he wanted to go to the same university as Yazoo and Loz, but it was picky about its essays, and he wasn't a spectacular essay-writer...

Sephiroth's sleek black sportscar was parked beside his bike, as always. Cloud gave his bike a loving pat and turned the key in the ignition. When the engine rumbled into life, the sound vibrating through him like thunder, he grinned to nobody in particular and started towards the exit. As he neared it, he thought he recognized the figure standing to the side - and then stopped the motorcycle completely. "Tifa," he exclaimed, surprised. "What are you doing here?" He eased his big black monster next to her.

"Bar's closed for the day. Some dude broke a cup over another guy's head and the police are writing both of them up. I'm not allowed to open until the hospitalized guy's condition has stabled, or until the police all commit hara-kiri over the tragic state of events." She huffed in exasperation. "They think I couldn't stop it because I was a _woman_. Bastards."

"They'd get the short end of the stick if they tried to fight you." Cloud was really fighting smiles today.

She scowled. "Damn right!"

He knew she wasn't there just to meet him. Her bar, only a scant block away, was a favorite among the Shinra executives, as it was close and Tifa, cutting her fine figure and her lashing tongue, provided ample amusement outside of the office. Cloud knew her well enough so that he was the first one to know when the previous owner sold the bar to Tifa herself. He also knew her well enough to know she broke up with her last boyfriend because he tried to kidnap her. "I attract the wrong sorts," he remembered her telling him. He had snorted, and she had snickered.

Things like that. They were good friends. So...

"Then you've got time," he said in his decision-made voice. "Come home with me and meet the boys. They'll be thrilled to finally see what's keeping their nii-san coming home so late at night." His lips quirked in invitation.

_So that was what she came for_, he thought when her eyes lit up. An exclamation of joy and eagerness, and then they were maneuvering through the traffic jams towards home. Her arms around his waist were warm even as his face froze into an expression of blankness in the whipping winter wind.

----------

"Hope you didn't eat too much hairgel," he quipped as he parked the bike into the garage. Tifa eyed the mikes and amps in the corner and started smiling again. "I don't suppose sitting behind me was much fun."

He had meant it - he wasn't great at conversations, he wasn't social at all, so why had she chosen him? "Why so much hairgel anyway?"

"I wanted to defy gravity." Her ensuing laughter richocetted off the walls in a way that was new and a little surprising, but Cloud wasn't sure if he liked it or not.

They got to the introductions soon enough. Yazoo tried to pick her up (Cloud cuffed him lightly on the head), and Loz tried to feed her peanut butter cookies (Cloud cuffed him too; "No sweets before dinner!"). Kadaj looked her over, swept a bow, and got down on one knee to kiss her hand. Cloud cuffed him the hardest, but he wasn't sure why. A tendril of the green monster wrapped around the stem of his heart when he saw the half-lidded gaze Kadaj gave her. He just wasn't sure who it was for.

"They're charming," she whispered to him as they entered the kitchen, together, shoulder to shoulder.

Loz had left the chicken in for too long, so they cut off the blackened parts while Yazoo ran to the nearest deli to buy an already roast one. The green beans were alright, as was the pasta and the sauce, but Cloud balked when he realized all they had for desert was peanut butter cookies. While he frowned over the problem, Tifa casually plucked Kadaj's frilly pink apron off the hook, looped it over her head and tied it around her waist. Cloud stared at her with a surprise that he couldn't even begin to describe.

"Close your mouth, or you'll catch flies," she teased. Her eyes were saying, _If you like me like this, then imagine me with nothing **but** the apron on._

Obediently he shut his mouth and turned back to mixing the dough for the cream cheese clouds. No, no, it was all wrong. The way she looked in it - it was all wrong. He was struck by the sense of loss, seeing Tifa in Kadaj's apron. It hugged her form in all the wrong ways. She had looked spectacular two nights ago at the dance, dolled up in a way that fit his conception of her. But now, seeing her taking the place where Kadaj was, he was keenly aware how much he would lose if he was to start seeing her now. Time away from Kadaj, time away from Yazoo and Loz...he wanted to keep them right there, right next to him where he could reach out and place his hand on their shoulders. He wanted to protect them.

He wanted them to be reliant on him.

They weren't. Not anymore, and perhaps they never were. Reliance and stability was what a parent was there for, wasn't it? So that the child could rely on them until they grew up enough to take care of their own businesses. Cloud had done nothing wrong so far, he'd let them go, letting go of them little by little, so now that he'd released them into the world, he could see them fly like kites let loose, ever more brilliant in their wild freedom.

His heart ached. He didn't want to be alone. That was why he would marry Tifa when the time came. But in his heart, he didn't want a girl - he wanted the boys, their silver hair, green hairs and glittering smirks, frightening in their intensity yet gentle in their caring. These were his boys, and he dreaded the day he would see them off to start their own families.


	3. You Sexy Beast!

Trapdoor (Part 3)

by anza (09.11.05)

Dinner went swimmingly. At least, as well as it could, with Kadaj and Tifa flirting shamelessly.

Cloud didn't mind. He didn't mind the roast chicken either; Yazoo knew he liked the herb and garlic one, so that was the one that graced the table. The cream cheese clouds were in the oven, baking to light cinnamon-goodness. The green beans were, predictably, the only things left when the meal was over. Cloud gave Yazoo's pile of green mush ("I like playing with my food before I eat it," he protested, and his eyes slid up catlike for a moment) a glare and a pursed lip, and like meek mice the boys finished their beans. Tifa almost killed herself laughing.

"Of course not, Miss Lockhart," Kadaj swatted an imaginary fly. On his body, the gesture was generous, grandiose. "We would be delighted to play at your bar."

Yazoo, Loz and Cloud were all more skeptical. "You haven't even _asked_ Uncle Seph yet," Loz growled out behind his chicken leg. Cloud nodded sagely in response.

"I'll convince him," Kadaj volunteered with a sweet smile. Everyone at the table took one look at his face and agreed he would be able to win even Sephiroth over.

"And my schedule," Yazoo added in disbelief. "Three-hour commute? Hello?"

"I'll get Cid to take you," Loz answered

Yazoo rolled his eyes in a typical teenager fashion that he hadn't quite grown out of yet. "Cid? He'll swing by at six in the morning. That means I can't attend lecture for the rest of the day!" He cut Loz off before he could retort. "I bet it'll be on a Friday. It'll be on a Friday won't it?" When Tifa nodded uncertainly, Yazoo moaned, "That means I'll miss the Saturday party scene!"

Kadaj chuckled. "You sexy beast," he winked at his brother, falling into their comfortable teasing atmosphere, "you never _go_ to the Saturday party scene. You're too busy missing niisan." His voice sang out sugary-sweet, and Cloud gave up his poker face.

It returned with Yazoo's next comment. "I do NOT miss nii-san," he protested.

With grave adult maturity, Cloud picked up his fork and flicked a green bean at Yazoo's head.

When they were finished with the fight, Tifa had slimy green beans wound through her hair, Cloud was an indiscernable mess of pasta and homemade marinara sauce, Yazoo's hair was twisted into a bun with the bone of a drumstick (courtesy of Loz's strength to hold him down and Kadaj's "artistic side"), and Loz was grumpily picking up pieces of their best "guests-over" plate off the ground. Somehow Kadaj managed to avoid everything except for a splotch of pasta sauce on his shoulder and the entire oily contents of the green-bean dish upended in his lap. Tifa had turned entirely senseless with laughter while Cloud righted the table and ordered Yazoo to get the damn chicken bone out of his hair and get the broom, _now please_, and Kadaj to throw Tifa in the shower, clothes and all, if she didn't stop laughing.

All in a day's work. To think he started the day filing papers.

Distantly he heard the shower start and Kadaj come back into the room. Loz was grumbling the lyrics to the heavy metal theme song of one of their favorite action films while scraping what was left of the chicken into the trash. Absently Cloud began to mop the marinara sauce on Kadaj's shoulder.

A hand stopped him. "I'm not a child, nii-san." Kadaj's eyes shone like half-lit moons in the dim kitchen. Cloud dropped the towel into his brother's hand with a nod, and turned to help Yazoo mop the floor.

Yes, of course Kadaj wasn't a child. It was only Cloud's wishful thinking that he could keep them here. His hands gripped the rag and it squeaked loudly against the floor. He and Kadaj had just waxed this yesterday. It wouldn't be long at all until he was waxing it alone, with nothing but the photographs of silver hair and green eyes to keep him company.


	4. If Something Happened

Trapdoor (Part 4)

by anza (10.11.05)

He was about to call it a night when Kadaj stepped forth from the shadows. "Welcome back," he said, voice uncharacteristically soft. Cloud could just make out the sheen of his hair, the bridge of his nose and the curve of his cheek. He was dressed in his pajamas. With a vicious slice, Cloud cut off that thought right where it started. He stepped back from the hidden door before him. No, he would not fall into that trapdoor! He would do ANYTHING before he fell into that pitfall!

"Thanks," Cloud murmured in return. Like always, he put his coat on the couch and Kadaj took it to his room. Like always he set his helmet on the coffee table, and his gloves on top of it. By the time he was done drinking his customary cup of water straight from the tap, Kadaj was there with him again, looking a little lost and lonely in the openness of the kitchen.

"Nii-san, are you mad at me?" Like always, Cloud forgot how sensitive the youngest was.

He washed the cup out of habit, turning away from the brother and the question all at once. "You should be asleep by now."

There was a shuffle-step closer. The line in Cloud's shoulders tensed. He set the cup controlledly into the drying rack, but didn't turn around. It was like something out of the movies, he related weirdly, except he wasn't an actor and Kadaj wasn't an actress. He just didn't want to see him right now, didn't want to see him there with his eyes shining with worry and concern and such _love_. In the same heartbeat, he didn't want to break Kadaj's trust for all the treasures of the world, and he wished he could throw it away like it was nothing. The knife in his chest twisted. The trapdoor was right behind him, right under Kadaj's feet. Didn't his youngest brother see it too?

He wanted to protect Kadaj. "I'm not mad," he said at last, and turned to look at Kadaj.

His brother was undeniably pretty in the sense that a man could be pretty. Vincent had been pretty too, but Kadaj was delicate in a way that Vincent had been threatening in height and concentration. Kadaj could change faces in the blink of an eye, could turn a subtle gesture into an art and a simple act into a sexual invitation. Often Cloud thought he didn't know how attractive he was. Yet, with three protective older brothers, no one dared to touch Kadaj wrongly. Cloud knew if anything happened, Kadaj would let him know.

Without meaning to, he reached out to smooth Kadaj's silk-fine hair. It felt so soft and smooth that unwittingly he relaxed. Those eyes were staring back at him again, reflecting only himself in those starry pools. Cloud was hurt; there was no other word he could use to describe himself in that moment. He was so heartbroken in the future silence of that house when he came back and nobody was home. So many years raising them, all of them. Kadaj was the last. After him, there would be no more silver-haired geniuses to bother him.

With the prime exception of Sephiroth. Sporadically.

His lips pulled themselves upward unwillingly. "Work's been hard," he tried to explain. "My secretary called in sick, so I spent the entire day filing paperwork like a rabid clerk. And then the President calls and tells me he didn't receive confirmation of the dishwasher orders, so when I went back to check I found they were all wrong. At least you guys cooked dinner, and didn't blow anything up in Tifa's face. She said she had a great time -"

The touch on his arm stopped him. The trapdoor inched closer, and Cloud felt the hyper-sharp blade of danger. One part of him whispered for him to step into that trapdoor, drag Kadaj there, so that when both of them emerged again, they would burn so brightly together in the sunlight. With every touch, with every look, he was twisting away, not wanting to look but eyes unable to tear themselves away, not wanting to touch but hands unable to let go. His feelings were all splashed together, a mismatched collage of pictures and emotions and memories of little things and big fights and sitting in front of the television, eating meals together, snowboarding in the mountains, winning round after round of poker...

These things revolved around his head until he could hardly think. They had spent six years together. It was too much. He turned away. In facing the loneliness of his future, he didn't want to go out with a glorious bang. He just wanted to rest, sleep away the rest of his life without a thought, without a memory.

"Nii-san," came the question through the fog of his turmoil. "Nii-san, are you alright?"

_What an innocent question. But with Kadaj, who knows what he really means?_ In one impulse moment, Cloud slid his hand to the back of Kadaj's head and brought it forward towards. Insanity in one blood-rushing moment raced to his head and filled it with promises. The trapdoor was open so wide, surely they would never make it back out even if they crossed that threshold with both hearts and minds set on coming back out. No, yes, no, yessss...

He pressed his lips briefly to Kadaj's forehead and then ruffled his silver bangs. "You go to sleep," he admonished, and the perfect moment was over, shattered into a million brilliant pieces of hope and joy and all things desire. Regret burned in his heart for one fierce moment, and then it, too, turned to smoke. As Kadaj went up the stairs, the trapdoor finally moved completely out of sight.


	5. He Conceded

Trapdoor (Part 5)

by anza (21.11.05)

"You don't have to go to college," he began.

It was dinner. Only him and Kadaj were home. After collectively wrestling broccoli from the refrigerator, cheese sauce from the pantry, and Kadaj _somehow_ setting the cellophane over the thawing chicken on _fire_, Cloud managed to bake a casserole within the hour. They mixed fruit juice drinks together over the kitchen counter as they waited. When Cloud finally caught Kadaj red-handedly slipping a slice of orange down his shirt, he doused his brother's head with Canada Dry (the whole six-liter bottle). They tried to grapple but both ended up on their butts; the soda made the floor slippery. They laughed. They had fun. At least, Cloud did.

And then the casserole burned. It relieved him Kadaj didn't care; having a socially dysfunctional but brilliant older brother made him used to little mishaps. They snorted in unison over the state of their dinner and ate it in equally amused silence. Kadaj's hand lay on the table as he slurped warmed chicken soup still in the can. Cloud wanted to lay his own ink-stained one over it.

His brother looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

Cloud took a deep breath and continued. "You don't need to go to school. You have your Ph.D. already, Kadaj...you're far overqualified to take GE classes. You could probably _teach_ those classes if you wanted. Just because Yazoo and Loz -"

"Yazoo and Loz went through college a second time so they wouldn't be emotionally stunted like you, nii-san." His brother's voice wasn't teasing or pitying, just pragmatic. "I'm doing it for the same reason. I want to be able to talk to others, nii-san."

Cloud smiled, faintly and almost bitterly. Here lay the difference. The trapdoor was really shifting out of sight now, melting into the ground. This was an insurmountable barrier, and Cloud wasn't even going to attempt to cross it. It wasn't worth it this time. Too much work for him...and the rewards at the end would be less than satisfying to everyone. Kadaj would be caught like a deer in headlights; Sephiroth would be disappointed; Yazoo and Loz would be horrified; he _himself_ would be horrified. He didn't even half to think about it, the decision was made so easily.

The regrets were harder to take. But as always, he was practical enough to sense the danger.

"Yeah." He conceded the battle to common sense and the battlelines of society. "Yeah, you're right. Just..."

Kadaj looked up finally. "You don't want me to leave?" There was a hint of a smile there, in those green eyes.

Cloud conceded defeat to this one too, and smiled embarrassedly. "Yeah. Yeah. I didn't - I _don't_ - want any of you to leave, though Yazoo and Loz have already flown the nest." A rueful laugh. "You'll be raising your own families soon, I know it. And I'll be an old codger with only pictures to hold onto." He swirled his spoon aimlessly in his own can of soup, feeling weak enough to cry but knowing he couldn't. He pushed the comforting sadness away and faced the smooth, cold wall of reality. This was the truth, and had always been, even unwillingly on his part.

There was a scrape as Kadaj got up, and a few steps brought him straight to Cloud's side. With a single, fluid motion, he was there, silver hair blinking into Cloud's eyes as he held his older brother close, head to collarbone, their shared warmth comforting yet forlorn. Loss. Separation. _Abandoned for better, brighter things._ Cloud put his arms around his brother, and the tears refused to come because he wouldn't let them. He must have looked really miserable for Kadaj to do this, he thought.

He hardly knew they were rocking back and forth until he noticed the chair was creaking. Kadaj was breathing softly, whuffs of air tickling Cloud's spikes, one hand clasped around the back of his arm and the other lower, fisted in his shirt. The blond felt the trimness of Kadaj's waist and loosened. They stepped back, suddenly uncomfortable. Boys shouldn't do this, not even with their beloved older brothers.

"Drink your soup," Cloud finally commanded, softly, and escaped the table quickly. Watching the rest of the soup dribble down the drain, he was reminded of his own sanity.


	6. Did You Know Your Friend Was Gay?

Trapdoor (Part 6)

by anza (21.11.05)

The moment he closed the door behind him, he knew Kadaj was not home. The house was as it always was, and Kadaj could easily be hiding behind a couch, the table, in another room - but then Cloud glanced down and his sneakers wasn't there, and he felt it ripple through him - shock? fear? protectiveness? He wasn't sure. But he knew he had to do something.

Five minutes later he had called the school, found Kadaj was _not_ in the nurse's office or the hospital, and had left school grounds. There wasn't many things that could have delayed him: knowing Cloud was a worrywart, he would have left a message if he wanted to go out with some friends. Usually he took the bus or biked, bus when he felt like pampering himself, biked when he felt like getting some exercise. His black motorcycle hadn't even had a chance to rest before he revved it back up and began following the bike path. Kadaj's bike was not in the garage.

He remembered something as he searched, head twisting left and right exhaustedly until he was half-dizzy with looking. It was about a month ago, when the moment he got home, Kadaj took his arm and led him back out to the garage. "My front tire's flat," he explained, plugging in the pump machine into the wall socket. "Was hoping you could help me out."

"You don't need help," Cloud pointed out. A pathetic attempt to put distance between them, when he had less than a year to enjoy Kadaj's company.

Kadaj didn't look up, but Cloud could feel the hurt in those hunched shoulders as Kadaj bent over the machine. He could even picture his youngest brother's green eyes widening, then softening into that neutral shuttered look when he was rebuffed, vainly searching the dial of the machine for some reassurance. The statement wasn't a lie, that Kadaj didn't need help. He probably would never need Cloud's help ever again after he went off to college (other than money...but Cloud would gladly give it all up to the brothers if they needed it). This...was just Kadaj's way of helping Cloud assuage his impending brotherlessness. Assuaging his impending loneliness.

After Cloud bent, resting his hands almost accidentally against his brother's shoulder, they went out for a ride on Cloud's motorcycle. "Better than a pet," Cloud had once told Tifa. But while they were riding down the streets, she was the farthest thing from his mind. What he thought of - rather, what he _felt_ of - was the exhilaration of riding so fast, coupled with the warmth at his back. At first, Kadaj's arms always wrapped gingerly around his ribcage as if he were afraid he would do some harm to his older brother. But as the ride wore on, those hands gripped tighter, closer, until Kadaj was snug against him, warmth shivering from his thighs all the way up to his back. With a half-shudder of some soaring emotion, Cloud took a right off main highway towards the beach, only a minute away.

As they shot towards the dying sunset gliding so brightly and sparkling across the water, Kadaj shifted in his seat slightly. Heat arched up Cloud's spine, desire lending his already-excited senses another kick. He knew he was going to do something stupid if he didn't stop soon - but the ride was so smooth, everything so fresh and clean, the sea breeze whipping his face and his hair, daring him to do impossible things. Unbidden he saw how they must look, he and Kadaj, a boy and a boy-girl, both in black, riding a huge black motorcycle. Kadaj's hair would be whipping so freely, Cloud wished he could lean back and touch it, feel it slither there at the tips of his fingers - desire. Want. YearningraptureardorfondnesspassioncravingfascinationlecheryLUST...

The serpent had raised its head in the pit of Cloud's stomach. "Nii-san," Kadaj had murmured softly in his ear, "nii-san, you're trembling. Are you cold?"

_No_, Cloud had wanted to say, and maybe he'd mouthed it, but no sound escaped his mouth.

It came first, a shock of warmth against his left shoulder, what Kadaj liked to call 'wingbone', as if humans had once had wings. Kadaj had rested his head against his older brother's shoulder. The tenderness almost broke Cloud in that moment, the delicate way his brother cared. A song was playing through his head as he relived the memory: that song, the one he had danced to with Kadaj, that one, the one about heartbreak with the sad, sad lyrics and the woman's voice, smooth with the rise and fall of emotion...

Kadaj's bike was parked at the mouth of an alley. Cloud double-parked a green sedan, turned off the engine and prayed it wouldn't get hit by some errant car. With caution he entered the alley, stepping over an overturned metal trash can and trash bags lining the sides. The smell got to him, but there was nothing he could do now.

"N-no, stop..." That was Kadaj's voice, sounding drowsy. Cloud sped up, picking his way less carefully.

There was a murmur of something, and then a moan. Cloud rounded the corner and tore away the boy who was about to tie his younger brother's arms to the metal railing of the fire escape above him. It was really a good thing he exited the office early today; he expected to get home at about the same time as Kadaj did.

The boy scrambled off, but not before Cloud recognized him. Hefting Kadaj into his arms, he started towards the motorcycle. He didn't even realize Kadaj recognized him until he felt those hands slipping over his shoulders and around his neck. "Nii-san...," came the confused murmur. "What are you doing here?"

"Did you know your friend was gay?" He had to ask.

Kadaj was silent for a moment. Cloud looked into his dilated eyes and knew he was drugged, and badly. He hoped he could get to the hospital without anyone recognizing him. "Mhmmph...," came the answer after a moment.

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"Yeah..."

They had exited the alleyway, and now Cloud could see nobody had run over his precious motorcycle or given him a ticket. "Hold on," he told Kadaj, though he knew he probably wouldn't understand or remember any of it later. "I'm taking you to the hos -"

"Nii-san," Kadaj's voice was childishly inquisitive. Like the sun coming out of the clouds, suddenly he was smiling, and Cloud blinked. He hadn't seen that level of cheerfulness since Kadaj hit the high school emo-heavy metal group he now hung out with. "Nii-san... _I love you._"

Cloud could have sworn his heart stopped beating. But he knew for sure it started beating again as Kadaj decided in the next moment that he wanted to throw up in the middle of the street.


	7. These Dreams

Trapdoor (Part 7)

by anza (22.11.05)

"Nii-san." The voice was quiet in the night.

Cloud sat up straight - straight into Kadaj's arms, that is. His youngest brother was half-kneeling on the bed, hands holding his shoulders, eyes wide with fear. For a moment Cloud stared at him as if he could see through him. And then he blinked, blinked twice, and the tenseness in his shoulders relaxed under Kadaj's touch.

"Kadaj."

"Nii-san, what's wrong?" Kadaj let go long enough to grab Cloud's sleep robe and forcefully wrap it around him as they trooped downstairs. Cloud's worst enemy, sitting innocently on the kitchen counter, cheerfully proclaimed it was three in the morning. He would have to go to work in four hours. He would have groaned, except then Kadaj would be frantic with worry that his brother was suffering through fits or something. Once in a while, his youngest brother's "mother hen" senses were cute - but not at three in the morning.

Especially when he was the object of Cloud's dreams.

_Goddammit_, he wanted to swear, _I'm fucking twenty-seven! Not some blushing virgin teenager entering puberty!_ Wordlessly Kadaj handed him a cup of pure black bitterness, and he downed it like a shotglass. He was angry - no, _furious!_ - but there was nothing he could do about it. There was no way to stave off pervy dreams, last time he checked. He didn't believe in nighttime knockout medicine (probably because he'd taken too many when he was younger and was now immune to every over-the-counter brand), he didn't believe in wonky Eastern sleep techniques, and he sure didn't think anything Kadaj was doing right now would make him sleep any better. He might as well go and watch TV in the living room until it was time to go work, and just snap at everybody tomorrow. Or rather, today.

Kadaj sat opposite him as he always did, eyes concerned. After a moment his head bent, cushioned on his arms, and they simply stared at each other. Cloud held that gaze as long as he could, mind still remembering the frenzy and the twist of their dream-bodies on the sheets - no, no, _NO_, this could not go on. With a grunt of supplication, he slid the cup over to Kadaj with a drop-dead fatigued look. The youngest gave a small, sympathetic smile, refilled the cup, and slung it back over with Tifa's expert bartending skills. Those green eyes, looking at him so tenderly, so caringly...and suddenly Cloud was coughing on his coffee, spitting it back into the cup.

"What the hell," he spluttered, gagging at the salty liquid.

There came a snicker from the other side of the table, and in a burst of inspiration from within Cloud's sleep-fuzzy mind pinpointed the culprit. The dining table gave a shudder as Cloud physically climbed over it, the coffee cup toppling to the ground and splashing the carpet (cleaned last week - not that the stains ever got washed out now, the whole rug was permanently dyed brown on one side and green on the other from the boys' Halloween experiment of dying and drying their individual Robin Hood/Merry Men costumes) dark black in the dim light. Kadaj gave a squeak and dove into the hallway, Cloud at his heels. The older brother gave a growl and almost reached his own home office before his face abruptly met the door. A jolt of annoyance lanced through him, and he tried the doorknob - locked. He could hear a smattering of giggling from inside.

"What did you put into the coffee?" He pounded three times on the door for effect.

"Not telling you," Kadaj singsonged.

He paused. "It'll give Tifa some ideas to get rid of customers." He hoped that would be enough incentive - Kadaj took to the woman quickly at their first meeting, probably seeing a fellow conspirator and prank puller, which could only mean more headaches for Cloud in the future.

Instantly the lock clicked, and the door started to open. Cloud didn't wait until it was fully open until he shot inside, seizing his brother and wrestling him to the ground. He wasn't weak, the youngest - but he was no match for Cloud, who pinned him until he couldn't hold his grip anymore, he was laughing so hard. _It must be three thirty now_, he thought, _three thirty in the morning with a cup of black coffee and my attractive younger brother in my arms, and I'm laughing. That is, after I just had a wet dream about him half an hour ago._ Even now, the pit of his desire, pooling in the bottom of his stomach, fanned out like liquid flame.

The world was messed up, he realized belatedly. But with Kadaj resting so gingerly in his arms, he didn't care.

----------

"Hey," Tifa greeted from the doorway.

Cloud looked up from his work and just looked at her for a minute. She really was pretty, her hair down to the middle of her back, dressed in a black tank and capris. The earrings he'd given her to wear for the dance were dangling from her ears now, sparkling silver drops with three diamonds embedded in each. He hadn't felt any shock at all when he saw them at the store, knew they were made for her, and bought them on the spot. Now, he looked at them and racked his brains for any time he bought something expensive for Kadaj. The bike was the closest, probably - which was probably still hidden in that back alley, as he hadn't told Kadaj where he'd hid it after he threw up, and he himself had yet failed to retrieve it.

"Hey," he greeted back, and stifled a yawn. It'd been a long day. The new model of CD players was selling well, as were the mp3 players, but as for the dishwashers and dryers, they would need more people to try them out before they could conclusively launch a larger-scale advertising campaign for them. As the largest producer of electronic goods, Shin-Ra Company had a reputation to keep, one that Cloud didn't particularly care for except for it paid for Loz's lodgings, Yazoo's tuition and he and Kadaj's daily livelihoods. And hence, the daily drag of work, like he probably would work until he was sixty and then abruptly fell down dead from overwork.

Somewhere during his ruminations, Tifa had snuck up behind him. As soon as her fingers began to massage the tension out of his shoulders, he gasped in relief, and then gave an "Uhhnn..." of relief. He had been stuck behind his desk all day, looking over papers, comparing charts, writing out new orders, telling people to stop reading porn online and get to work, _now please?_Sometimes he told them they were worse than all three of his brothers put together. His coworkers just gave each other a look, a smile, and then dutifully went back to work. Once he'd asked why they smiled, and they replied, "Well, they're _your_ brothers after all - blame your own influence on them!"

He had stared in disbelief that his own fellow coworkers would blame _him_ for his brother's bad behavior, until he thought about it and figured it was probably true. It was certainly true they hung out with him a lot, Kadaj leading the lot with almost a fanatical adoration of him. He didn't know why, really - once, Loz had explained it as having "saved them from being in the care of someone else", but then just shook his head and went away. Cloud had thought about that for a while, wondering if he really was THAT good of a big brother, if he was really worth their time. But these were all questions that he couldn't possibly answer...

"Wanna go out for a snack?" Tifa's voice flowed into his ears.

"Mmhmm...," came Cloud's intelligent answer. He was already imagining the taste of a chocolate eclair from the pastry shop down the street.

After gathering his things ("Why do you need so many papers? I thought you actually spent _time_ with Kadaj when you get home," Tifa rebuked him), they set off not for the cafe, but for Tifa's bar. Surprisingly enough, Sephiroth was there, absently washing dishes and glasses. Cloud could tell his brain was somewhere in Neverland because half the glasses came out still dirty. Quietly Cloud took up another rag and began rewashing them.

Tifa hummed as she prepared panini for the three of them. The roar of the fire was loud enough so that Cloud winced when a particularly angry sizzle of oil hit the pan, he couldn't hear Sephiroth talking until after it had died down. "Huh," he said, turning to the silver-haired man confusedly. Really, he was full of witty remarks today.

"I said, have you resolved your trouble with Kadaj?"

Cloud glanced at Tifa, but she was singing a pop song at the top of her lungs - and off-key. With a bit of desperation to escape the noise (like a warbling chocobo, he thought - and then realized he had no idea what a chocobo was), he answered, "Er...yeah."

"You don't sound convinced."

He looked down at the glass in his hands. He had polished it enough so he could at least see the shine of his blue eyes in it. He gave a sigh, "No, I guess not."

Like a laser field, Cloud could distinctly feel Sephiroth looking him over. "Well," the older man offered at last, "just get it over with soon."

He would have replied, if Tifa hadn't shoved a still-piping hot panini sandwich into his mouth, still chirping like a chocobo. Sephiroth looked politely increduous for a moment before he took broke into a smile as Cloud coughed out the food. Licking his lips curiously, he realized he recognized the taste -

"Wha...?" And then he remembered. "_Kadaj called you_, didn't he," he asked murderously. "This tastes like his goddamn coffee this morning!"

"Pure vinegar," Tifa chirruped.

With one last gag, Cloud downed a water and staggered out of the bar. His little brother was going to pay for this humiliation.


	8. I Remember

Trapdoor (Part 8)

by anza (28.11.05)

"Hush," Kadaj said against his lips.

They were stuck, of all places, in a broom closet. Cloud had come to school because Kadaj had been caught spreading cellophane over the toilets. The _girls' bathroom_ toilets. As always, the principal was most displeased. Cloud was even more displeased, because Kadaj had apparently been caught with his - not "guyfriend", as Cloud liked to call it, but "gayfriend".

It was mean, and maybe he really did liked Kadaj, but Cloud sure as hell wasn't allowing anyone to drug his baby brother after THAT little incident.

He hadn't talked to Kadaj about it. The next day Kadaj had woken up in the hospital, Cloud had stuffed a pastry and a coffee at him and told him to eat breakfast fast because he had school in approximately three minutes and if he was planning to get a ride on Cloud's bike, he'd better hurry up. He'd slammed the hospital door behind him, partly for dramatic effect and partly because he didn't want any new dreams. Imagining Kadaj's blissful face was torture enough.

And now he was smothered against said brother-and-halfway-lust-interest in a broom closet. Great. _Fucking_ great, as Cid might describe it. He tried to imagine Tifa's pissed off face if she caught them in such a trysting position, and succeeded admirably. He tried to image Sephiroth angry and succeeded in that too. And then he tried to imagine Vincent pissed off, and...couldn't. He could remember other things about Vincent, though: how his eyes crinkled up in laughter even though his mouth wasn't smiling, how those pale spider-fingers brought blazing sound forth from his guitar, how he bent almost double over the company desk that was too small for him. Cloud remembered once he'd gone in and massaged his shoulders, and Vincent had leaned back into his hands that loosened the knots in his back. Vincent, eyes flashing different colors in happiness and anger. Vincent, traveling halfway around the world just to escape Cloud and the truth that Cloud loved something more than Vincent: his work.

"They'll be good for you," Vincent's voice rang in his head. He was talking about the three little wide-eyed boys that had been plopped onto his doorstep. Privately Cloud disagreed; Loz had been fifteen when he came to Cloud. That was already well into teenagerdom.

His throat was filling up with some sort of bitter emotion that he couldn't name. That is, until Kadaj whispered it in the dark. "I hope you know I'm not _regretting_ that prank, nii-san." He could see the half-moon smile in the dark, as little comfort as it gave him now.

_Vincent._

"Let's get out of here," he murmured, and they opened the door together. Like a gunshot they split in opposite directions, like kids in a hedge maze, until they met at Cloud's bike.

----------

"So _that's_ where it was," Kadaj sighed. Together they hefted the bike from the back alley ("I'm surprised it wasn't stolen," Cloud commented, "It wasn't locked or anything...". "They probably saw your face and decided it wasn't worth risking the wrath of a pretty boy, nii-san." Cloud would have whacked him for that, if Kadaj hadn't skipped farther into the alley) to the street where Kadaj would be able to ride it home. In a misstep Cloud slipped on a caved-in soda can, and the bike's balance lurched crazily. Straightening with a huff, they continued out, the bleak winter sunlight filtering down, turning Kadaj's hair a dull silver.

"Do you remember anything about it?" As always, Cloud had to ask.

"I remember saying, 'I love you' to someone...". Kadaj's voice faded. "Nah. That was probably my imagination. Who would I tell that too anyway?" He shook his head with a foolish little smile that made Cloud look away, the emotion in his throat had suddenly heated, melting like the state of his heart.

Numbly he nodded in accordance.


	9. Date of Birth

Trapdoor (Part 9)

by anza (29.11.05)

They were singing "Happy Birthday" to Loz.

Cid was there, slapping his back like an old buddy - they _were_ old buddies, and Cloud realized he rather did regret they weren't buddies now, both of them had been so wrapped up in their work. After the whole cake-thing, they set up the equipment and jammed their bleeding liberal hearts out. Their garage didn't have the best acoustics, but the forty or so friends Yazoo had somehow bullied/roped/persuaded into coming didn't seem to mind. Cloud supposed Yazoo had a reputation as a guitarist at school, as he did back in high school.

The cake was a...lopsided _something_ from Tifa and Seph. The former almost strangled Cloud after the performance, and the latter had looked mildly embarrassed (and then downright glared at anyone who "Awww"ed) when Tifa revealed the red icing "Don't Drink Too Much Tonight!" (Loz was twenty-one now; how old Cloud felt when he set up the candles!) was his doing. It was chocolate-flavored, and Cloud didn't like chocolate-flavored stuff, but fortunately Tifa volunteered to eat the rest for him. Very delicately he dabbled chocolate crumbs off the corners of her lips. She gave him a sweet, warm smile, one he couldn't help but return. He smoothed her hair, tucking one strand behind her ear. She looked down, demurely embarrassed.

"I know that's just an act," he murmured lowly in her ear. There, there it was - her smile turned wickedly mischievious in a moment. It reminded him of his youngest brother, not standing but ten feet away -

- who was currently staring at Cloud as if he could detract some sort of miraculous revelation from him. But then his gaze shifted over to a point above Cloud's right shoulder, smoothing over into blank vapidity that would have put Barbie to shame. Cloud marveled, horrified, at the change of mask, wondering at what his little brother could possibly be staring at, until he turned around and ran smack into Sephiroth's chest.

Ouch.

"With your hair like a fluffed chocobo, it's no wonder you can't see past three millimeters of your face, Strife."

Double ouch.

He barely had time to marvel that someone other than him had said "chocobo" before Yazoo was there, dragging him towards the stage. "A speech from our beloved elder brother," he pushed Cloud like a battering ram, said oldest brother digging in his heels the entire way. There was a chorus of "Awww"s, and then suddenly Cloud was on their impromptu stage, a couple of boards from the neighborhood home improvement store stacked over apple crates. As a joke Yazoo had bet Loz would break it as soon as he stepped on it; Loz (more realistically) bet it would break as soon as all the sound equipment was piled on it; Cloud and Kadaj both bet it wouldn't break, though Cloud said it just to get the others out of his hair. Not literally. He wondered if he did constantly look like he had some giant canary roosting on his head.

"Er," he stuttered. A few people snickered. "Don't look at me that way - it's not my fault I'm up here." The microphone looked threatening at first, but now he was starting to relax. It wasn't anything he hadn't do before. He was just handicapped when it came to his social life. Yazoo was making a kissing face at him that made Cloud lift one eyebrow and squint his other eye. "I don't suppose you'd be happy if I just congratulated Loz on surviving until he was legal?" People booed. "What if I added that he did great on stage today?" There were murmurs of agreement, and then a more rousing cheer. When the sound died down, Cloud continued, "What if I said that I think I'm blessed to have three little brothers?" Now there were "Awww"s, and a few girls whistled. Cloud suddenly looked out over the faces and felt his smile freeze, as if time had completely paused for a second, and he was able to run his eyes over everyone.

He knew some of them, knew some of the faces, but most of them melted into anonymity. He got the sudden sinking in his stomach as suddenly their faces twisted into those of monsters, staring, grinning, licking their lips like predators to the kill -

- there was a touch on his elbow and he turned. His youngest brother gave him a smile, said a few words that made the crowd roar, and then firmly led Cloud into the living room, away from the noise. "I'm gonna kill Yazoo after this," he muttered mutinously. Cloud gave a faint, nauseated smile in return. Kadaj noted the expression and lifted one hand to trace the hairline. Like a supersensitive radar, Cloud imagined he could feel every cell of his fingers as they smoothed the tiny, fluff-fine hairs. The second passed into eternity, until Cloud caught himself staring into those green eyes breathlessly.

With the force he usually put into avoiding work, he wrenched himself away. "I'm fine," he said with a smile, hoping it would was reassuring enough. He got up, his back cracking as he stood. Kadaj was standing very still next to him, looking at him, studying him as if he could glean the secrets of the universe from his face.

Loz, outside, whooped as someone poured an entire bottle of champagne over his head. It seemed they weren't waiting until tonight to get drunk.

Like a warrior, Cloud made his face his shield. He was sure Kadaj could see there had been some resolution reached. "Let's go," he murmured, completely calm. He wasn't thinking anymore, he told himself. He wasn't thinking about anything any longer. And sure as hell he was going to let this, this _sickness_ tear their family apart.


	10. Food for Thought

Trapdoor (Part 10)

by anza (30.11.05)

"Good morning," Rufus Shinra addressed everyone from his customary chair at the head of the table. With a press of a button, the projector screen came droning down, revealing another extraordinarily boring computer presentation, complete with arcane pie graphs, flowery language and unintelligible blabble.

It wasn't that Rufus Shinra was stupid. It was that these were really just for show to competitors who hoped they would trip somewhere - which, as far as Shin-Ra Company was concerned, wouldn't happen as long as Sephiroth was around. Sephiroth, second-in-command to "Prince Rufus" (as the company nicknames went) ruled the others with an iron glove that twisted tighter and tighter until everyone did what he wanted. The Prince didn't care as long as he got the women and the money. As childhood playmates (or rather, bully and victim), Cloud was seventy percent sure Sephiroth had pulled some strings to get him to where he was. Yet he'd never seemed to want any favors from him. Cloud liked to think it casted a more generous slant on his second cousin.

To his right, one white headphone cord ran under Scarlet's (appropriately) red jacket and hooked over her ear. It was something angry and screaming, the kind Cloud snuck into Loz's room for when the company was really throwing shit at him. Across the table, Reeve was doing the daily newspaper crossword puzzle under the handouts they had been given earlier. Ogham, who had taken over Vincent's position when he left, was the only one sitting upright and listening attentively, though Cloud could already seeing those eyes glaze over, only awakening to jot something down. Tseng, a newcomer with some trumped-up position that Cloud himself wasn't sure of, seemed to be productively taking notes, until Cloud shifted a little higher and saw he was scribbling Wutaian vows of homicide in the margin of his handouts. Cloud himself was doodling a chocobo sitting on top of his messy hair.

Sephiroth, sitting diagonally from him, tapped his pencil, shot a look at Cloud's drawing, and raised one fine silver eyebrow.

The next drawing Cloud drew was a chibi Sephiroth, spouting fire like a dragon.

He took a moment to tap Scarlet's knee. When he was sure she was paying attention, he tapped his ear twice, then pointed a finger down. A moment later he heard the tinnying screams from her earphone lower into smurfy whispers. He gave a half-smile and turned his attention back to doodling, this time of Rufus Shinra running away screaming from Sephiroth carrying a sword almost as high as he was.

Hmm. Funny where his imagination was taking him today.

Glancing over at Tseng's paper, he almost chuckled at the vein of thought the other had taken. "...and then the devil shall be purged in the pit of fire of the Death Serpent's belly, but the evil will not subside...," Tseng's scribbling just got faster as Rufus' voice floated above all other distractions.

"...I'd like to thank Cloud for figuring out the confusion with the dishwashers earlier this week, it was really good of him to catch that mistake..." Cloud nodded wearily. The others gave him half-hearted congratulatory looks, then turned back to their perspective hobbies.

It felt, Cloud thought laughingly, much like high school.

Reeve was writing something near the top of his paper. "What's another word for 'depressed'?" was now scrawled messily, backwards, under the title "Minutes From Last Week". Cloud noticed his S's were backwards.

Instantly people perked. Suddenly everyone began scribbling. Rufus Shinra noted the flurry of activity with a smile and continued talking about something.

"crestfallen, sad, disappointed," wrote Scarlet.

"unhappy, dejected, rejected, melancholy, distressed," wrote Ogham. His bushy brow twitched into a smile, but a glance from Sephiroth stopped it from forming completely.

"woebegone," Cloud wrote, and a round of muffled snickers ran around the table. Reeve gave a nod and scribbled it in.

"What about an antonym for 'war'?"

"That shouldn't be that hard," Scarlet shot back.

"peace," came Ogham's tentative guess.

"Nah, it's longer. Eight letters," came the reply.

There was a long, puzzled silence over the table. Rufus Shinra seemed to take their gloom as response to the decline in television sales, and continued saying something.

Finally Tseng wrote one word at the top of his paper, the only English word he'd written so far. It read, "creation".

With a marveled look that mirrored all of the looks around the table, Reeve copied it in and gave a grin.

"Reeve, you wouldn't mind explaining why the hell the Development Board hasn't come up with anything new for the last three months, now would you? It would be nice to know where sixty-seven percent of our funding is going." Apparently the increduous look applied to the Prince as well.

Cloud almost grinned at the chagrined look on Reeve's face. "Nice going," he wrote at the top of his page, and gave Tseng as large a smile as watching a fellow executive get chewed out would allow.

The Wutaian didn't blink or change expression, but he returned in Wutaian at the top right of his paper, in tiny print, "Thank you."

"My previous employment had better food." Tseng slid a slice of reheated pizza across the table to rest in front of the seat opposite Cloud. With a nod of agreement, Cloud dug into Kadaj's chicken tetrazini with gusto. His heart sank when he thought about it - no more home-cooked meals once Kadaj was at university, three hours away. He didn't know how he could take it when the time came to return to the old instant ramen after having such good fare...

"And what would that be?" Cloud was curious. He was rather sure he had never seen Tseng speak more than five words in one sitting in the last four months he'd been in the Company.

A wry half-smile. "Chopstix." Chopstix was a well-known Wutaian fast food chain. "So at least I got to eat ethnic food every day, even if it'd been Continentalized beyond belief."

"At least it was rice." He was missing Kadaj's rice pilaf, the one they always got into fights over because they both liked two different types of mushrooms, and the damn brother wasn't even out of the house yet! Mentally Cloud ripped himself away from thinking about anything but Kadaj - Sephiroth, dancing on a barstool with Tifa agape on the side, Ogham dressed as an elf from a medieval novel shooting cupid arrows at unsuspecting victims, Reeve butt-naked singing a love song at the top of his lungs -

- yes, his imagination was definitely acting funny today.

"Cloud?" The name rolled strangely out of Tseng's mouth. Suddenly Cloud was sensing danger.

He finished dinner quickly and left. Something had spooked him, and it was distressing not knowing what it was. He had just rounded the corner when he ran smack into Sephiroth. Rubbing his forehead, he looked up and expected to be chewed about having chocobo-roosted hair again...

...but instead, out came this:

"Strife." Sephiroth's voice was tight. "Just the person I need to talk to."


	11. You Preen, Niisan

Trapdoor (Part 11)

by anza (03.12.05)

Cloud wasn't good at following his instincts. If he was, he would have long ago jumped Kadaj with no thought to the consequences. But something about the way Sephiroth said it - something about the way he stared at Cloud as if he could impart some subliminal message under the weight of his already-heavy words...

"Do you know who the Turks are?" That low bass echoed through Cloud like the agonized voice of a guitar.

Above all things, Cloud wanted to protect his brothers. He knew there was hype and non-privacy when it came to being a high-profile executive in the largest electronics company on the continent - but that was exactly what he depended on to keep them safe. No one would stand by idly if three successful younger brothers of an innocent Shin-Ra executive were hurt in public. Cloud was right in gauging that as long as he kept the inside of their little family stable and tranquil, there would be no worries.

On the Continent, Turks was another word for mafia.

"Tseng is one of them." That mild-mannered, handsome Wutaian? Cloud pictured him in his mind. One crimson dot on his forehead, hair tied back into a ponytail neatly. Dressed in an impeccable black suit and tie, Cloud had foreseen him hanging out with the rest of the executives at Tifa's bar. Yet he couldn't just ignore Sephiroth's warning.

He didn't even know _why_ Sephiroth warned him. The man was pretty cold sometimes, after all.

So though Cloud didn't trust his instincts, he knew what he felt: the distinct chill that there was something much, much larger hanging over his fluffy chocobo head.

----------

Loz was snoring so loud Cloud wondered how the house hadn't shaken off its foundation yet. Though he made enough noise to stampede a herd of elephants when he was drumming, the grumble-drone of Loz's unconscious sleep habits was capable of making the entire block shudder with the sound vibrations. Every time he snorted, Kadaj turned his music up louder, until Cloud could hear it tinnying even through Loz's snores. With a resigned sigh, Cloud gathered up his papers, grabbed his two still-conscious brothers, and drove them all to the mall.

It was Sunday afternoon. As Yazoo exited the car, the sunset hit him just right so that for a split second Cloud thought he was looking at Sephiroth. The sun highlighted the silver a bright red, and turned Yazoo's eyes an unnatural two colors. When he looked back at his oldest brother, he gave a smirk when he saw he was staring. "See something you like, nii-san?"

Cloud clenched his jaw and gave a look that clearly said, "Don't be stupid", and the three of them trooped into a department store. Like a girl, Kadaj wandered into the teenage boys section, peering into the racks at anything black. In unison Cloud and Yazoo rolled their eyes and declined to comment. Cloud supposed he really _did_ rub off on the boys.

Not that they were boys any longer.

He remembered the first time he saw them, at court. The three of them were sitting at the table in the front, facing the judge. Loz was sobbing on Yazoo's shoulder, the middle brother trying to soothe him. Kadaj was the only one with no emotion on his face, as if someone had taken a rag and wiped all expression from his clear green eyes. Then, in one distinct motion, his head turned, and he looked straight at Cloud.

Cloud had been twenty-one, just elected to the head of his department, but he couldn't help the deer-in-headlights feeling he got. It remained today; Kadaj only had to look at him with that half-curious, half-knowing look, and he would instantly shut up. When all three of them showed up on his door, he looked for Kadaj first. This time he detected worry, and uncertainty in those eyes. Kadaj had been eleven, and already Cloud saw a shadow of his own weary eyes in those reflecting pools. It wasn't until he gruffly invited them all in and set three mugs of hot chocolate with happy faces in whipped cream in front of them that any of them said anything.

Predictably, it had been Loz who spoke up. "Where's Mom," he asked. Cloud gave him a look that cowed the fifteen-year-old, and conversation had dried up until Kadaj tried to cook dinner. But then, Cloud supposed he couldn't really count that as conversation, as he was cursing creatively enough to make Cid choke on his cigarette.

With some resigned nostalgia he tore himself away from those thoughts and forced himself to look through a few polo shirts. He had just raised his eyebrow at a particularly hideous magenta one when a tie was shoved in his face. Amused/Annoyed, he tilted a few degrees to the right to see Kadaj's grinning face. The tie was black with yellow happy faces all over it.

"C'mon, nii-san! It'll look great when you're rocking with us!" The smile was infectious; Cloud couldn't fight it and looking over Kadaj's shoulder, Yazoo couldn't either.

"I don't rock with you guys." He was trying to tell the truth, but Kadaj's disappointed look made him want to lie.

"Of course not," Yazoo cut in, his voice smooth enough to slice. "You _preen_, nii-san."

Cloud was indignant. "I do _not_ preen!"

"Buy the tie," Kadaj chipped in. The grins on both the silver-haired siblings' faces were equally identical and frightening.

In the end, Cloud didn't buy the smiley-face tie. Instead, at Kadaj's behest, he bought a blue one with cartoon pink, grinning squids all over it. He decided he would wear it tomorrow and see how many comments he could rack up. Perhaps he would even take a picture of Sephiroth or Rufus' face when they saw it. They weren't blackmail pictures, but they would be sufficiently amusing enough to hang on his wall.

They had just rounded the corner when Cloud saw the sleek black car in the driveway. And somewhere, somewhere in his frozen, socially-inept brain, a voice told him disaster had struck.


	12. You Have A Good Guess

Trapdoor (Part 12)  
by anza (03.12.05)

It was Sephiroth's car that was parked out front, but when Cloud entered, both Sephiroth and Tseng were there. The former was oozing comfortably in the armchair Cloud usually occupied, and the latter was leaning against the staircase. There was a niggling sensation in the back of Cloud's head, telling him he'd forgotten something massively important -

- "Where's Loz?" Kadaj demanded. It was scary how he could sound so threatening and so quiet at the same time.

Sephiroth shook his head. "He wasn't here when we arrived."

"Which was?" Cloud stepped forward, placing himself between Kadaj and Tseng. His hair was standing on end - that is, more than it usually was. He suppressed a shiver of excitement/anxiety, and then snapped a clear order to his brothers behind him. "Nevermind. Leave the packages by the door, take my bike, and go find Loz." There came a soft brush of warmth from someone's hand - Kadaj, most likely, Yazoo wasn't one to give reassurances - on his arm, and then the front door shut. A minute later he heard Fenrir rev up, and then the retreating grumble of the motorcycle told Cloud that they were heading for the highway. Unconsciously, he breathed a sigh of relief.

It had been a long time since he had felt like this. Though neither had made a move, he knew danger. Danger, like the time he was almost expelled for being 'too smart'. Danger, like the time his mother had pushed him away and told him to run, to go to the other house because he was never going to see her again. Danger, like when he marched towards the boy who was trying to rape Kadaj, and saw red before his eyes. The edge of the cliff, the ground dropping so sharply into dark nothing - it could only be a threat that hid behind Tseng's eyes, only warning under Sephiroth's placid gaze. Perhaps Cloud trusted his instincts more than he thought.

"What do you want," he asked finally into the silence. He prayed, prayed to any god out there, _Please let them all be safe!_

"Do you know who the current godfather is?" Tseng's expression had not changed, but Cloud knew he was now calculating every move he made.

"No."

Sephiroth spoke up, now. "Do you know who supplies armaments to the Turks?"

Cloud had a good guess, but it was nothing for sure. "No."

"You have a good guess."

Cloud stared back at him. Sephiroth's eyes were mirrors, reflecting nothing but himself and his worry. "Yes. I believe, now that you've both broken into my house, Shin-Ra Company supplies the Turks."

Tseng gave a nod. "Correct. Do you know why we're here?" Cloud kept a perfectly calm expression, willing himself to show nothing. The Wutaian continued, "Probably not. But you have a good guess to this one too, don't you?" There was a threat there, hanging like the crescent moon in the sky, hanging like the guillotine, blade shining so innocently in the brightness of day...

Cloud knew what he had to do, even though his mind was screaming denials. The heat of danger surrounded him, choking him. The Turks. How long it had been since he had anything to do with them!

Even he could hear the desperation in his voice. "What do you want me to do?"

----------

He was cooking dinner alone when he heard the key turn in the lock. There was a murmur of something, and then the familiar thud of Loz's boots being shoved into the counter. Cloud breathed a sigh of relief. He waited, and sure enough there was a soft double-knock on the kitchen door, and Kadaj's fey face peeked around the corner. Cloud met his cautious glance and turned back to crushing the garlic with the flat of his knife.

There it was again - Kadaj's warm hand, brushing over his arm. He could feel the anxiety even through the cloth of his sleeve. "Nii-san," his youngest brother asked. "Is everything alright?"

Cloud closed his eyes. _No, no, NO, nothing is alright_. "Everything's fine."

"Why was Uncle Seph in the house earlier?"

He studied the chopping board as if it would give him answers. "It was business," he answered finally.

"Just business?"

He met his brother's eyes at that. "Just business," he affirmed, and then turned back to cooking. The silence stretched, and Cloud almost thought Kadaj was gone -

- until pale hands lifted the pan and spatula out of his hands. In the golden haze of the kitchen lights, Kadaj seemed ethereal, frail, and not quite human. "Nii-san," he murmured, eyes shrouded in his silver bangs, "let me do this. You rest; you look like hell, if you don't mind me saying so."

Like a dream, Cloud lifted his hand. As soon as the back of his fingers touched the smoothness of Kadaj's temple, he felt a jolt of reality strike him, hard, right there in the heart. Sadly he tucked his brother's hair out of his eyes, and brushed his lips familiarly just to the right of one emerald eye. The revelation, the truth of the meeting earlier that had hit him with all the speed of a freight train - the responsibilities he now shouldered...

"Nii-san." Kadaj's voice was trembling, and his eyes were a little wide with some wild emotion that Cloud was too tired to wonder about it. "Nii-san, you should sit down for a while." Those eyes implored him to go back to normal, _please_.

He would need Kadaj more than ever, he realized.

With a numb nod, he went upstairs and stayed there until he was sure everyone in the house was asleep.


	13. More Weird Imagination?

Trapdoor (Part 13)

by anza (04.12.05)

It was three in the morning when Cloud sat up. It was the next morning already. He had slept a few hours since leaving Kadaj making dinner in the kitchen, and his stomach was clearly making it known he hadn't eaten. Still, he threw aside the covers with a decisive manner that showed, above all, that his desperation had reached a breaking point.

The guitar case was right there in the back of his closet where he'd left after Loz's birthday. His heart clenched at the thought - _Loz. Loz and Yazoo and Kadaj._ The three brothers that had changed his life, had pointed his life in a real, meaningful direction.

He stared at it a moment, lost in thought. He could feel plastic under his hands, ridged like elephant skin, the firm white print of "Valentine" running up one side. In the back of his mind, the rational part of him was telling to him to move, _fast_, now that the Turks wouldn't expect him to do anything but mull for a few days. But as his hands brushed the spiderweb-cracks on the cover, the icy-glint of the latches, he couldn't help but think if he opened this case, he would have to throw them away, _them_, his brothers, his heart...

He wrenched himself away from his despair. Sephiroth would take of them. At least, Sephiroth would take care of them like he was supposed to, or Cloud and his fluffy chocobo head would decapitate him with his own six-foot sword.

More weird imagination? Cloud shook his head as if he could clear it. It wasn't time to imagine anything. It was time to leave this life, leave his brothers as if they never existed, leave all of it behind in a mad escape plan that was probably going to fail...

He pushed all thought aside. There was enough space for four changes of clothes, a handtowel, some soap and shampoo, and three crisp green rolls of money. It wouldn't be enough, he knew - but the boys all knew their emergency accounts to draw on if they needed anything, and this would last until he found new employment, probably nothing like his job at Shin-Ra Company...

With a final snap, the guitar case closed. The guitar was still in the case, of course - it was the compartment above and below it that held of all his stuff. He didn't leave a single corner empty of stuff, whether it was extra keys, extra money, a small photo album...guns, and enough ammo to take down a small army if he was careful enough with it. Vincent's pocketknife, a list of addresses and phone numbers to call if anything arose, pens and pencils, an alarm clock. Things, all the things that would make up his future life, packed all in this little black box.

He wouldn't cry. He _refused_ to cry. But the feeling of leaving, of hopelessness crashed over him wave after wave, and he turned away from the suitcase and all it symbolized to look out the window, seeing the view for the first and last time.

He was making his way down the stairs when he realized the television was on. As he stepped down, his foot met the cool wooden floorboards in the same moment he saw someone was there, seated in front of the television. The noise-cancellation headphones were plugged in, the black line starting from the hunk of machinery, past a pair of bare feet, and up to the headphones -

- Yazoo. Yazoo was seated in front of the television.

As soon as Cloud noticed him, the middle brother took off the headphones. Now Cloud could hear people dying in synchonization with the people on the screen. Setting down the guitar case as inconspicuously as he could at the bottom of the staircase, he made his way into the living room, taking a seat on the armrest of his favorite armchair.

"What's the guitar case for?" Yazoo's voice was steady, revealing nothing.

"Why are you still up?" Cloud matched his brother's voice in blankness.

A pause. And then: "Are you leaving us, nii-san?" There - at the very end, Cloud could detect a hint of that same hysterical desperation as he was feeling at the moment.

He tried to think, but found it was as if he was grasping at smoke. All there was in his mind was the giant gaping hole where the future was. How could he provide the same surety he had in the past? He hadn't known this would happen, so what could he say now? "Do you know why I'm rich," he said, finally.

"No."

Cloud took a deep breath to explain. "It's because my mother was part of the Turks. She was the favorite of the previous godfather. In order to save me, she made a deal with the opposition to raise a scandal so that the previous godfather would be killed. It succeeded, a coup followed, and in the midst my mother was executed by the remaining supporters of the previous godfather. The new godfather kept to his promise and kept me out of all mafia affairs - as well as granting my mother's wish of giving me a hefty fortune to survive on. I've kept it all safe - safe, in your accounts, so that whenever you should need it -"

"What about you?" Yazoo's voice betrayed nothing, but his eyes said, _You do so much for us it hurts, nii-san._

"I've got enough." His voice was tighter than usual. With his eyes, he replied, _You know I'd do it again, and that I'd do it doubly, triplely, quadruplely more if it mattered._

They sat together, the only noise between them the screams of the dying from the headphones and the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. Finally Yazoo spoke again, "Where are you going?" And then quickly, before Cloud could reply, "Why can't you take us with you?"

Fondly he placed one hand on Yazoo's head. Despite himself, despite the bitterness of his circumstances, he smiled. "You've got your own lives now, Yazoo. I can't take you away from that. Where I'm going is dangerous - I couldn't put you in danger, any of you. Sephiroth will take care of you, don't you worry. And there's enough money to -"

There was a sudden movement and then taciturn, unemotional Yazoo was hugging him close, squeezing him as if he couldn't bear to let go even for a moment. "I don't give a _damn_ about the money, nii-san! But I know for sure all of us would rather have you here, here with us than any money in the world!"

Shocked, he held his brother close. Yazoo wasn't crying, but his shoulders were shaking. "It's alright," Cloud murmured, "it's alright. I'll be safe. You've got each other, you don't need a dysfunctional brother like me -" A choked moan/sob from Yazoo that caught him by surprise, and then he held his brother closer. Yazoo felt warm, soft, hair pressed against Cloud's nose. "Take care of them, Yazoo - Loz looks to you to keep you guys all together, my brothers, my beautiful brothers..." He wished, wished to whatever deity lived up above that he wouldn't have to leave them for too long, or else he swore he would go insane. "I'll be here, right here, when you need me, just think of me and I promise I'll be there like I always have, Yazoo."

"I miss you already."

He smiled, sadly. "I don't want to leave," he whispered harshly to the silence of the room.

If it had been Kadaj, he would have exclaimed, "Then don't!", but this was Yazoo, who just quieted, thinking. When they pulled apart, those green eyes were as clear and blank as ever. "You have go to where you have to go, nii-san. I know it's not safe, so I'll always worry. But take care of yourself, nii-san. And...," he frowned, and Cloud waited, "...one last thing."

Then those eyes lifted, and Cloud swore Yazoo was speaking plain English, but he wasn't understanding, couldn't comprehend. "I want you to take Kadaj with you," Yazoo said, and Cloud saw he was utterly serious.


	14. Want and Not Want

Trapdoor (Part 14)

by anza (05.12.05)

"No," Cloud answered calmly, though his heart was beating so fast out of his chest it was a wonder the Turks hadn't been alerted yet.

"But -"

"NO."

They stared at each other. Yazoo tried again. "Nii-san, I don't think you understand Kadaj's dependence on you," he said, punctuating _dependence_. "I don't think he can live without you, that's what I mean. You don't realize how much he looks up to you, adores you, _loves_ you, nii-san. If you took him away now, he'd go into shock."

"I can't be here for him!" Inwardly Cloud winced; his voice grate so harshly against the white, wordless walls. "I can't stay for longer than tonight!"

"Then say goodbye at least!"

"No!" Cloud felt something in him breaking, shattering, crushing so utterly into the dust of yesterday. "No, he must stay here -"

Yazoo stood abruptly, eyes blazing. "You don't know how much we love you! You just want to protect us, and you have! You've done everything so well, nii-san, and we love you for it! Every time you showed you cared, even when we told you we didn't want you here, it told us you would be here at home when we came back drunk or wasted or hurt. Now it's our turn." Cloud recognized the decided tone of voice as one he used himself earlier. "I've got a place to back to - I've got the university. Loz has his apartment and his job. _But Kadaj doesn't have anywhere to go._ If you leave, you can't possibly ask him to stay here where he can be reminded of you every day."

"Then take him elsewhere. You can." Cloud was perfectly serious.

So was Yazoo, matching him stare for stare. _"He wants you, nii-san."_

There was a way he said it that made Cloud look closer. Yazoo was standing in the middle of the living room, a little diagonally, his sleep clothes hanging loosely off of him, but the two jewels of eyes, set like living windows, gleamed out from under his hair, holding Cloud there. In an instant, Cloud's heart froze, his face tightening as if someone had screwed it shut like a coffin lid.

Yazoo saw it immediately, and stepped forward. "Nii-san, listen to me!" Cloud listened, half-heartedly. It hadn't been a secret after all. His sickening infatuation with his youngest brother, a boy _ten years younger than he was_ - disgusting, distasteful, loathesome, offensive betrayal of everything he was supposed to be -

"Nii-san!" Yazoo's voice cut like a dagger through his thoughts. The other was there, suddenly, standing in front of him, shaking him slightly. "Nii-san, pull yourself together! Tell me something: who do you think I am?"

He was confused and lost. "Yazoo. Yazoo, my brother...," he hesitated to say the last word.

But Yazoo didn't flinch like he did. "Yes. Your _brother_. Someone who probably knows you better than yourself, nii-san." He let go, his voice continuingly, flowing and untroubled. "Nii-san, I've known for a long time now, maybe even before you knew yourself. And I can tell you, it's not unrequited."

But Cloud wasn't listening. Under his breath, he was hissing softly, "...disgusting, he trusts me as a brother, disgusting, _disgusting_..."

"No!" Yazoo was shouting, and an absent part of Cloud's mind noted it was very unlike him. "No. No, nii-san." Was Yazoo begging? It sounded like he was. "No, nii-san, I'm not lying. And it's not _wrong_." At that word, Cloud twisted out of his grasp. "Nii-san, you have to take him with you," Yazoo added desperately. "You know how much pain it will cost you if you left him, so you must know it would break him if you left him here without even a goodbye!"

"No!" Cloud tore himself away, willing himself to crush those hopeful dreams into powder, washing his hands of his almost-sin. He didn't want it - he hadn't ever wanted to feel this way, and now that Yazoo had presented this in front of him, he didn't want to admit the heady _lurch_ of happiness his mood had taken, spiraling upwards with every dream he remembered.

"YES!" And with the force of someone who knew exactly what they were doing was right, Yazoo dragged his older brother up the stairs.

----------

Kadaj had not awoken, though they had shouted their loudest downstairs. For a moment Cloud looked down at that sleeping face, so young and so lax in the moonlight, and then put one hand on his shoulder. The clock on the bedside read four in the morning. He began to shake him awake, watching the blinds play shadow tag over the silver pool of finery on the pillow.

"I'll start packing," Yazoo murmured to him. Cloud told him where his spare guitar case was, and then Yazoo was gone in a flash. Under his shaking and murmuring, Kadaj had begun to awaken.

Cloud watched, enthralled, as those green eyes cracked open, shut, then fluttered open again. A long "Mmmhph" came from the back of his throat, along with a stretch of his arms. And then nothing, the room falling into silence. Cloud was about to shake him again when Kadaj shifted again, green eyes seeing him for the first time. "Nii-san?" That quiet voice in the silence shattered all of Cloud's hopes to keep Kadaj here. He knew, in that moment, that he couldn't push Kadaj away now, couldn't possibly bear being apart from him now that they had walked so far together.

The door banged against the wall, and both of them looked up at Yazoo, struggling with the guitar case. "Sorry," the middle brother muttered, and kicked open the case.

The silver-haired brothers both stopped, shocked, as a fully loaded .30 caliber rifle met their eyes.

With quick strides Cloud pulled down the second compartment and opened Kadaj's underwear drawer. "Help me," he commanded Yazoo, who pulled the shirt drawer completely out of the bureau to sort through the clothes. Kadaj seemed frozen on the bed, staring at the both of them with wide eyes.

"What are you doing?" he finally asked.

"Packing," Cloud and Yazoo answered in unison. "You're leaving with nii-san," Yazoo added as an afterthought.

"What?" Kadaj said in disbelief. "With nii-san?" Now that he knew, Cloud caught the glimmer of hope in that question. "Where are we going?"

"Out of Midgar. In fact, if I can manage it, off of the Continent completely." Yazoo spared him a glance of "Are you sure that's not overkill?", but Cloud gave a nod to affirm his statement, and fished Kadaj's passport out of his drawer. Along with that came his PhD diploma, his citizenship papers, his driver's license, and some of his baby records. With that, the second compartment was filled. Slamming it down, he opened up the top comparment and began to stuff clothes into it. "Get dressed," he told Kadaj tersely.

"But why?"

Cloud spared enough time to say, "As long as you're with me, you don't need to know anything." Both the brothers looked up at that, but Cloud's only response was to grab Kadaj's favorite guitar in the corner, lay it into the velvet second compartment, and slam the lid down.

Outside, the very beginnings of the sunrise began to streak over the horizon.


	15. He Laughed To Think He Hadn't Changed

Trapdoor (Part 15)

by anza (06.12.05)

He had forgotten all about it.

It wasn't until they had taken the first train out of the suburbs he was reminded, suddenly, like the jolt-jump of the train. Kadaj gave a sigh and let his head fall onto his older brother's shoulder. Cloud was almost startled out of his seat, but then he looked down and saw Kadaj was already asleep, head bouncing in time to the bump of the train tracks, and forced himself to relax.

A matter of corny train scenes from the romance novels he kept stashed under his bed ran through Cloud's head. Viciously, he popped each one with masochistic glee. This was REALLY not the time.

He knew where they were going. They were headed towards the ocean - not the beach ten minutes away from their house, but further north, as far north as they could go. Already he imagined Kadaj, shivering under the yawning pillars of Nibelheim's train station, and his own apologetic form, running up, impatiently tugging a thick coat onto his brother's shoulders. Like a fussing mother, he would be saying things, nonsense, tumbling out of his mouth like a fountain, unable to meet Kadaj's clear, piercing green eyes. He was afraid - yes, he was afraid. Afraid, now that they were alone. They had left Yazoo and Loz and all of Midgar behind. He had left his job, his house, and most of his money. And Kadaj was there, next to him, slumbering peacefully.

The train was taking them somewhere, taking them far into the black, bottomless future that he couldn't discern. He was afraid for Kadaj and for him, for their survival. This fear, it reminded him of the trapdoor that opened so unexpectedly under his feet.

His heart beat fast in anticipation, though. Finally away from Shin-Ra Company's endless company rules, red tape at every turn, mindless grunts that didn't know how to do anything, and most of all, the Turks, he was free. And he was glad he had pulled Kadaj free. Perhaps now, he could show Kadaj some of the things in life that really mattered - the taste of the wind in his face, the quiet glow of the moon in the teacup as the clock ticked steadily, the heat of two that had abandoned the real world for a divergent one that floated above any pleasure one could experience alone...

Unwittingly his hand tightened around Kadaj's shoulder, and the teenager shifted. Ten years. _Ten years younger._

----------

They arrived at Costa Del Sol soon enough. The train stopped to refuel for a full half-day, so Cloud shook his sleepy brother awake and the two of them located, moved, and dumped their luggage at a nearby hotel for the night. Still half-asleep, Kadaj moaned when he heard the train left the next morning at six. Cloud only tightened his grip on his brother's hand as they maneuvered through the crowds. Costa Del Sol was a resort town, and in his responsible!nii-san mind, that was tantamount to a pleasure town.

He hoped Yazoo remembered to leave early so he could attend lecture the next day.

But as he moved through the crowds, he frowned, and it wasn't because of Kadaj or Yazoo. He was remembering seven years ago, even before any of the brothers entered his life, back when someone still commanded him like a grunt, back when Vincent had swept into his life like a bloody dream straight out of hell, the color of their passion, the color of slashed wrists and devilish laughter. Still now, Cloud wasn't sure how he survived - his time with Vincent seemed a splash of color and noiseless video recordings that automatically shredded themselves after they played themselves in their mind. He remembered clinging to that arm as it dragged him through the crowd, and remembered when he looked up into those eyes, they promised him the darkest, deepest secrets of the world. It had been frantic, as if every moment had been treasured for its ability to be wasted. With Vincent, Cloud had thrown his arms to the buffetting winds at the top of a cliff and screamed his lover's name to the whole visible universe of diamond-studded sky. With Vincent, he had braved Reeve and Rufus and Sephiroth with a thinly veiled rebellion that thrummed under his skin like the latest hallucinogen. With Vincent, he had gone abso-fucking-lutely crazy.

Looking at Kadaj, asleep once more on his shoulder, he almost laughed to think how much he hadn't changed.

He dragged the two of them to the nearest cafe, ordered five cappuccinos and two slices of cheesecake. It was past lunch and they hadn't eaten on the meal compartment, but something sweet would perk both of them faster than anything else they could eat. It was Kadaj's first time at Costa Del Sol, and Cloud wanted to rush him through the best before they left again.

"Nii-san?" Kadaj's voice was lower with just-awakened huskiness. In an impulsive jolt of emotion, Cloud wanted to jump him right there, in the middle of the cafe, where he would kiss his brother-lust-interest senseless and probably be charged with fifty different pedophilia charges. "Nii-san," came that voice again, "are you listening?"

Cloud forcefully bent his thoughts away. "Yeah." His voice was not nervous.

"You're blushing."

"Yeah, well..." Suddenly he was remembering again. He and Vincent, in Costa Del Sol, and they had watched a play after dinner. Cloud had fallen asleep slouched in his chair, and when he awoke again, he wasn't at the hotel or the third balcony seat he last remembered. Disoriented, he sat up, but couldn't see anything but when he reached out, he realized he was lying on something lacy, and that something equally lacy was hanging to both sides of him. He was confused and as ready as hell to take down whoever was stupid enough to kidnap a Shin-Ra Company employee when a light waved in the darkness - Vincent, a swirling black cloak around his shoulders and the tallest top hat he'd seen in his life perched like some horrendous black bird on his head.

Cloud had looked down. He was wearing nothing but a flimsy nightgown. A flimsy _girl's_ nightgown.

"Oh hell no..."

Vincent's lips quirked at his disbelief. "Do you remember anything from the play at all?" That voice, so smooth and so even, so calm even in amusement that Cloud found himself shivering from nothing.

"N-no..."

Vincent tossed the cloak aside. "We're behind the curtains, right on stage, Cloud." He leaned closer. "They're watching, though you can't see them. Don't you want to give them a show?"

Cloud shivered again, the tremble running from his shoulders and into the satin sheets. And then Vincent's mouth met his, and he was recognizing the story, completely unlike the chastity of the play -

"Nii-san!" Kadaj was cranky with three cappuccinos boiling in his stomach.

"Yeah, yeah..." Cloud ran a hand through his hair self-consciously. "Sorry. Lost in thought."

"I can see that." Kadaj's voice was even sharper than those on post-all-nighter mornings. "Care to enlighten me where we're going?"

"Well I was thinking -" Cloud was interrupted by a rather jarring crash behind Kadaj. As both of them turned to look, a man had overturned a table and was now shouting at the top of his lungs at a girl Cloud determined (from the slew of profanity and drunken slurs issuing from his mouth) to be his girlfriend. The other patrons grumbled, especially those whose coffee was now being delightfully enjoyed by the ground. Scowling, Cloud decided it was better if they left, and he motioned Kadaj finish the last cappuccino and bite of cheesecake before they had to fill out police eyewitness forms. He wasn't sure their fake IDs would pass inspection.

He had just patted his pocket to make sure his wallet was there when there came a very familiar click. Electricity raced through his limbs, and he wasted no time in even checking who the hell had a gun before he slid over the table, grabbed Kadaj, and threw both of them below the table before all hell broke loose.

There was a scream, cut off suddenly, and then mass exodus of the store. Kadaj gave a jump as the woman (the girlfriend?) stopped screaming, followed by an echoing thud. From the little square of vision their vantage point provided, Cloud watched in horror as a blood slowly crept into his vision, running easily over the wooden floorboards. As one part of his mind said, _Dammit, now we really won't be able to get out of filing an eyewitness report_, the other part of his mind was saying, _Dammit, guess we don't even have to enter the Turks to see this sort of action._ Several agonizing heartbeats passed, where he held Kadaj's face to his shoulder, feeling his brother shake. His grip was so tight it was almost like -

- abruptly their shelter overturned. Cloud froze; the drunk man was standing there, blinking stupidly down at them. All at once he leaned down to get a better look at who was there as Cloud shoved Kadaj behind him, squeezing him as tight as he could into the corner farthest away from the attacker. He had a gun, a shiny black, impersonal weapon he knew very well how to use, but he would rather not blow his cover the first night out of Midgar.

Kadaj was breathing hard behind him, and Cloud could almost see those green eyes peering just over his shoulder, so frightened that white could be seen all around the pupils.

_I will protect him!_

The drunk man smiled. Cloud could see clearly now that the girlfriend, and several others, were all dead. The cashier and the waitresses were all huddled behind the bar. There were no other patrons in the store except for them. Abruptly his attention was jerked back to the man standing in front of him, who had raised his gun. Cloud's heart pounded in his ears, and all at once he began to pray, pray harder than he had in his entire life, that Kadaj would have enough sense to fish the hotel keys out of his pocket, make a run for it, and discover the list of addresses in his guitar case. That way, he could get off the continent, Cloud was sure of it...

"Pretty face," the drunk man slurred. With his gun, he laid it parallel to Cloud's face, the tip of the barrel touching his temple, slowly stroking down his cheek, ending at his chin. The line of chilliness burned with hysterical danger. Cloud was sure the entire world could smell his fear now. Words babbled in his heads, half-formed regrets, but all of them too frantic and too fleeting for him to make sense of any of them. "Such a pretty face," the man continued. "You sure you're a guy?"

Behind him, Cloud heard a shuddered whimper of, "Nii-san..."

_I will protect you..._ His hand closed around the grip of the gun, feeling the metal fit in his grip like...well, like an old lover.

But he didn't have a chance to take it out, or even fire it, because a moment later the drunk guy was flung back with a yell into the bar. There came a sickening crack as his had hit the marble tabletop, and then he slumped over, eyes half-lidded. A splatter of blood dripped, forming a puddle on the floor. Cloud looked up at his savior, and blinked.

He was young, well-built and most of all, good-looking. A childish face, framed with gray-black spikes, and warm brown eyes stared down at him. Cloud blinked again, as if he hadn't quite seen pretty men before, and then blinked again when the stranger offered his hand to him.

"Here." Hesitantly Cloud put his hand in his, and the stranger pulled him up. Turning, he helped Kadaj sit on one of the still-upright chairs, and brushed himself off. The adrenaline was flowing out of him, the heightened rush that fear brought slowing, and he found himself looking again at the stranger. Such warm brown eyes, it reminded Cloud of someone, but now that he and Kadaj weren't in immediate danger, his brain couldn't think of how to get him and Kadaj out of there before the police arrived.

There came the whine of sirens in the distance. Cloud tugged Kadaj upright as the cafe/bar's employees came out of hiding. The stranger was smiling, an expression that looked surprisingly in place even in such a situation.

"Thanks." Cloud made sure he met the other's eyes for a full half minute, showing his gratitude. After all, it was because of this man that he didn't have to blow his cover.

"Hey, no prob." That smile on the other's face was so easy, so relaxed even after he'd just taken down a threatening drunk waving a gun around! "The name's Zack Darklighter." And Cloud swore that grin just got _wider_.

Something in him was still wary, but as he reached out his hand to shake Zack's firmly, he felt slightly relaxed since the beginning of the trip.

_Slightly._ It just wasn't natural for people to grin all the time, after all. As he and Kadaj rounded the corner out of the shop, he wondered idly if Zack grinned in his sleep too.


	16. For the Better

Trapdoor (Part 16)

by anza (06.12.05)

It is a whirlwind, sinking into the ground, but without sound. Only feelings in the air, hovering, spinning, twirling gracefully like dandelion seeds, like flower petals, like the ocean spray. Cloud is not a dreamer because he never allowed himself to be. All his life, there were only things that he had to do, things he had to accomplish, things in the path set out for him that he had to overcome. He overcame them with hard work and luck. Sometimes he went at them softly, picking apart each knot methodically, straightening each thread, laying them neatly into rows where everyone could see his work. Other times he cut them apart with swords, and let people see the silent, focused predator inside of him. Not vengeful. Not vain. Just highly capable.

It was in this manner that he made his way to the top, and once he was there he looked around and didn't see Vincent, he floundered.

----------

The two of them were perched on the cliff where Cloud had once defiantly screamed Vincent's name to the sky. It was sunset, red and heated, but the sea wind cut through their clothes like paper. Still, the biting cold invigorated Cloud; he was feeling it, like the first of many emotions to penetrate a baby's memory. He wasn't a workaholic anymore under another person, he wasn't escaping work once he hit the highest position in his department. He was Cloud Strife, alias Rowe Christopher, enjoying an unplanned and very welcome vacation for eleven hours in Costa Del Sol.

All at once, he felt like striking a "macho!" pose, just to make people sweatdrop. He was Cloud now, after all - not a fussy, stuck up executive - _Cloud_, who had lived his childhood as a Turk before being unceremoniously and belatedly shoved into the world of children. He had never recovered. He had thought when they played "Turks and police", they meant the Turks really had to kill the police. He didn't believe the police would win against the cunning, foxlike Turks.

Kadaj was huddled on the edge, arms tight around his legs to conserve what little body heat he had. "Can we go now," he grumbled, and Cloud distinctly heard his chattering teeth.

"Yeah," he murmured, and they slung their arms around each other on their way back to town. Cloud's mind was still contemplating his freedom to notice how irresistibly close they were.

----------

They had just sat down at a nice out-of-the-way diner overlooking the beach when Cloud was bowled over by something - _someone _- squeezing him so tight he couldn't breathe. He gagged, floundered for several moments, before his fingers found the grip that had him trapped, and tugged fruitlessly.

Cloud thought his hair couldn't look any worse than it did, constantly standing on end. A minute and a noogie (he hadn't had a noogie since he was four! He didn't even remember _who _had noogied him, just that he didn't enjoy it!) later, he looked into the mirror of the men's restroom and decided he stood corrected. Somehow his hair looked as if a chocobo had made a nest in it and had now left. Straightening out his spikes as best he could, he looked up as his savior-turned-tormentor spun him around, arms spread in what could only be a welcoming fashion.

Cloud was _done _with welcomes for the night, thankyouverymuch.

"Rowe!" Zack was _still _grinning. Cloud decided there was an eighty-five percent chance he grinned in his sleep too. "Rowe, my man! Howzit going?" He slapped Cloud friendly on the back. The ex-executive in question almost cracked his head against the mirror, there was so much force in that gesture! Now he understood how that drunk guy had been tossed so effortlessly into the bar.

"Alright, I guess."_ It would be better if you hadn't treated me like a kid and hadn't attempted to strangle me_, he added privately.

"Met your companion out there. Quiet sort, ain't he?" Inwardly Cloud stifled a laugh. _He's only quiet until you get to know him, and then you'll be begging him to stop talking_, he thought.

His smile at the thought of Kadaj didn't go unnoticed by his companion. "Ya like him?" Zack's eyes were warm, teasing, and meant no harm, but Cloud still - _still _itched under his skin. Something was off, and as gregarious as Zack was, warning bells went off in Cloud's head every time he came close.

"Like Kane?" Cloud's smile widened in response to Zack's own. His insides had frozen themselves somewhere around "Howzit going?". Now everything he was saying was calculated, weighed, cautious. "Of course I like him. He's my good friend."

Zack raised an eyebrow. "An old geezer like you with a teenage friend? Excuse me if that doesn't lean the wrong way." Cloud chuckled as Zack impishly wiggled his eyebrows. "Sounds more like friendship to me, eh Cloud?"

Cloud smiled generously. Something about this man was really off. He had met this man twice within five hours. Costa Del Sol was not a small town. He would be more careful. Though Zack's demeanor was unassuming and friendly, coincidences happened very rarely in such a large world.

"You're imagining things, Zack." His smile had molded itself to his face.

He avoided questions as much as he could, and turned down an invitation to sit with Zack (who, afterwards, sat alone in the corner, looking as occupied as he could, so bored Cloud almost took back his answer) during dinner. When he returned finally to the table, he heaved a sigh of relief that made Kadaj look at him closer than usual.

Cloud shrugged the concerned gaze off with a tired smile. "All in a day's work," he said as a way of explanation. His brother reached over, placing one hand over Cloud's. The oldest almost stiffened, but caught himself before he could. Slowly, Kadaj ran one thumb over the smooth ridges of his knuckles. The contact was so innocent, yet so telling. Cloud was so sure his heart was suddenly shining in his eyes, his desire and his patience a rubber band that stretched and stretched into uncertainty. The split-second hesitation before he did something stupid hung pregnant in the air, and then Cloud reached up and patted Kadaj's hand with his other one. He was comforted by Kadaj's gesture, but now it had to stop. The moment and the idea spluttered, gutted, and blew out.

_It's for the better_, Cloud told himself fiercely. He wondered how he was going to hold off for the rest of the trip.

----------

_Author's Notes: I truly apologize for the long update. I actually had this chapter up for, oh, ten minutes before I realized the italics weren't in, and went back to do it. By then, of course, it was time for class and I had to wait until I went home to do it - in which I promptly forgot. So again, thank you all for sticking with this so far, I love all of your comments (though I'm not really one for answering them one by one), but know I'm thinking of you when I write this fic. Love and toodles, anza._


	17. Watching the World Beyond the Cage

Trapdoor (Part 17)

by anza (08.12.05)

The train ride up to Nibelheim was quiet.

Half an hour in, Kadaj fell asleep in Cloud's lap. Now, his head was pillowed on his beanie, while Cloud had spread his raincoat over his brother. With a murmur of thanks, Kadaj had pressed his cheek right against Cloud's stomach. The oldest brother had had a hard time not jumping up or shoving his brother to the compartment floor. The only consolation he had was that at the time, Kadaj was so dead to the world he hadn't heard his little gasp of shock and the red he _knew_ spread across his cheeks.

He had put one hand on Kadaj's shoulder to keep him from falling off the narrow seat, and now he brushed his thumb over the rough cloth of his raincoat. Kadaj's breathing was smooth, even, and deep. Cloud yearned to take his finger and stroke down the side of one pale cheek - but instead he stilled his hand, feeling the heat at his fingertips ripple through him.

It was folly. It had always been. Once again, he was struck by the mocking sadness of his misplaced feelings.

Like a child, wanting to cry. Like a bird, wanting to fly. Like watching the world beyond the cage. Cloud was always these things, reaching for the sky, reaching for impossible things. If Vincent had given him the keys to saying no, then he was certainly saying no too much now. There had to be a limit to desire, to feeling so deeply - certainly human propriety, certainly someone out for his safety and reputation, would pull him back before he and Kadaj dropped into that trapdoor.

_Kadaj_. It would have been better if he hadn't come on this trip at all.

It was because he knew what it was to be left behind. It had been his fault, he didn't deny it - yet Vincent, in all his stoic silence, hadn't said a meep before leaving. And he remembered it, the moment when he reached out and his hand met air instead of the red, red dream he thought he'd been dreaming.

He pitied Kadaj. That's why he was here now, sleeping softly in his lap. He knew what it was to be left behind, discarded, only the tattered once-beloved banner as a landmark in the passage of time.

----------

The train ride up to Nibelheim was long.

It was the bleak morning of the third day. They had stopped twice, but no one had stopped in front of the compartment door or tried to open it, so Cloud's pistol remained where it was, digging into his tailbone. Kadaj had his earphones in, lying horizontally on the seat with closed eyes. Cloud rested one hand against the windowsill and stared at the passing scenery.

There was nothing to do but dream now. But Cloud was reluctant to dream about the future; he decided to go back in time instead of forward.

He remembered his first fight with Kadaj. It had been over a piece of cheesecake, but it was more than that. Cloud had been testing the waters, seeing where he could step, and where he couldn't, and somewhere along the way, he'd stepped on sore spots without knowing.

"You're so damn protective, nii-san! Why can't you _leave me alone for a minute!_"

Cloud had been dumbstruck. He couldn't imagine wanting to be alone. He recognized that it was him who was wrong, that he was the one who really wanted the attention. It had been about three months in, and when he had quietly noted a mistake on Kadaj's ten-page essay on the difference in experiments that used lead-based placebos and been awarded with a smile...well, he couldn't help but want to see it more. Vincent had smiled, just a little quirk of his mouth, and commented, "You're going to be a slave to them soon." He remembered nodding absently at first, and then vigorously when it sunk in.

Taking his numb, slack face for heartfelt pain, Kadaj had immediately apologized, touching his arm tentatively at first, and then flinging his scrawny arms around his brother's neck. Cloud had been shocked again, but gradually he relaxed, and then melted. Kadaj was quiet, trying to show he was sorry by keeping silent, but Cloud had wished he would say something, that he would just smile that happy smile.

He vowed from that point on that he would never, ever let _anything_ take that away.

----------

Kadaj was asleep again, head in Cloud's lap. Cloud himself couldn't fall asleep; the rattle-clank of the train had kept him awake for more than an a full day already, and he was sure it would keep him up for the few more hours it took to get to Nibelheim. Outside, it was dark, the trees blacker than the night and the stars above. Quietly he placed a hand on Kadaj's shoulder to keep him from falling off the bench completely, and stared out, completely and utterly lost.

The passage of time had been so strange. He hadn't said a word, and yet it seemed twenty-seven years had whisked before his eyes before he could even attempt to open his mouth. Cloud knew that something had happened, though, things that had shaped him into the person he was now. But all of the images blended in his head: school, his mother, the Turks. Vincent with his dark hair, Reeve laughing, Tifa tossing an empty tray like a frisbee at a man who was causing a commotion. Yazoo asleep on his desk from overstudying, the smell of fresh cookies in the oven, the first time he had ridden a motorcycle. A fight between him and Reeve over which company Shin-Ra should buy three centimeter steel screws from, Zack's face and his bright eyes, the taste of Wutaian sugar candy. A dream when he was five about flying. The first time he had hit someone. His mother finding him in his bed, asleep with a book tucked under his arm.

The first time he had fired a gun and killed someone.

He closed his eyes. He was tired, even if he couldn't sleep. They kept on flashing in front of his eyes, half-snatches of the past. They were past. And though some of them made him turn away, wanting to hide himself, coldly he comforted himself with the knowledge that he would never have to face many of them ever again.


	18. C'mon!

Trapdoor (Part 18)

by anza (10.12.05)

Nibelheim was silent like he remembered.

Then again, Cloud was so lost in his thoughts he almost didn't notice a cart missing him by a matter of millimeters. "Whoops," came the apology, and his head snapped up at the familiar tone of that voice. Instantly the noise of the station crashed down over his ears: people shouting, whistles blowing, luggage crashing into the cart, Kadaj coughing softly (and still sleepily) to his side, relatives greeting their welcomed new arrivals, the squeak of metal wheels on metal tracks, the hawking of newspaper vendors...

"Hey! Rowe my man, whatcha doing in this backwater place?"

Cloud almost twitched, but his Corporate Bullshitting Smile #56 stayed firmly on his face. There was _definitely_ something wrong with Zack, and it wasn't just his smile. A feeling that Cloud had seen him somewhere before, a tingle of familiarity. _C'mon_, he urged his sluggish mind, _think! I know this feeling means I've seen him somewhere before - where? When?_

"Looking for a job," Cloud answered before he could stop himself. Kadaj gave a mumbled affirmative, dozing on his shoulder. The oldest brother mentally told himself to give Kadaj a lecture not to sleep so much - when Kadaj was a little more awake, that is.

Zack gave a confused, almost disgusted face. "Why d'you wanna work in a place like this? It's such a...a _Hickville_." Cloud gave a shrug in response. "Meh. Got somewhere to stay tonight?" Cloud nodded, but Zack read the lie in his eyes. "C'mon!" With a strong jerk, the two brothers were strung behind Zack like some sort of strange three-compartment train.

----------

"C'mon!" Vincent's voice was gruffer than he intended, Cloud was sure. They escaped the whirling snow into the shelter of an arbor and instantly the blond was pressed against the glass window of a cafe, Vincent's lips on his, hands seeking, pressing, finally curling around Cloud's shorter, slighter form, twining the two of them together. It was impossibly exciting, a challenge to see who would dominate, though Cloud knew it didn't matter. Fighting for the sake of fighting. Loving for the sake of filling up the emptiness in him for a little while - ahh, it didn't matter, not when the cool shiver of Vincent's hair was on his fingertips, filling his vision with the red-black dream of Cloud's nightmares.

There was a scar from those times, right over his heart. Kadaj had never seen it; neither had his brothers. One night Vincent had marked him, the night he had gripped his lover's shoulders so hard they drew blood. He knew it excited Vincent, blood - the sight of those identical sets of half-moon marks the next morning had set him off again, making them late for work. Vincent's teeth brought out the best and the worst in him - _the best lover in town_, as Vincent liked to tell him, _and the worst Shin-Ra secretary in the history of the company._ Cloud had just pulled the two of them closer.

"Vincent," he breathed, and their breaths made clouds in the air like those from the sewers in Midgar on cold days. "Vincent, the man in the club called you 'Chaos'."

His lover had nibbled his ear and murmured lowly, "Isn't it appropriate?" And privately, Cloud wholeheartedly agreed.

----------

"Well, here it is!" They stopped in front of an apartment building - not a bad one, mediocre and very normal-looking even though Cloud couldn't tell with all the snow piled on the front. Certainly, it was one of the better ones in Nibelheim, though Cloud was used to seeing Midgar, not Nibelheim. Nibelheim was large enough to make it onto the map - but small enough not to make a difference in the nationwide decisions.

They hiked up to the third floor, where Zack opened the wire cage around the door to prevent people from picking the lock, and then, with a flourish, exposed his apartment. "Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, and a kitchen I don't use! I sure hope one of you can cook - I'm positively famished. Wanna pick lots for showers? And the first person better not hog all the hot water!"

Cloud and Kadaj blinked at the torrent of words from their host's mouth, and then at the grin he gave at their nonplussed expressions. "Aww, it doesn't matter - why doesn't Kane go first, then? Rowe can cook, and I'll get your stuff into your room. Ya want the room with one bed or the room with two beds?" Kadaj looked like he was about to butt in and answer, but Zack beat him to it. "What am I thinking? You two probably want the double, the single's mine anyway. Don't wanna hear me nattering all night, do you?" _Damn right_, Cloud agreed in his mind, and read the same in Kadaj's "I'm-politely-listening-just-not-absorbing-anything" face.

"Well," Zack concluded with a thwack that sent Cloud and Kadaj barrelling into the kitchen counter, "let's mosey!"


	19. They Had Been Such Good Brothers

Trapdoor (Part 19)

by anza (13.12.05)

He awoke when a draft from the wind blew in, adding new snow to the growing pile on the floor. Cloud felt sory for whoever slept below - no doubt melted snow as now dripping onto their heads. For the moment, Cloud was content to let that smug thought slip from the top of his mind, snuggling even deeper into the thick blankets -

- he touched something.

----------

The last time he had slept with anyone was Vincent, a frantic last joining of body and bright lights, was as if someone had yanked the windowshades down in a dance club with only the two of them in that myriad of pounding music and passion. But Cloud let that thought go too - he was remembering the last time he'd slept with anyone innocently, without the faintest hint of sexuality.

It had been Sephiroth, if he remembered correctly. He had been seven and just attempted to run away from his new foster home. Though she had been cold, Cloud's blood mother had threw him his first schoolbooks and then, like a vague afterthought, The Last Male Virgin on Earth. It was followed swiftly by A Dummies' Guide to Cross-Stitch, Love Me Forever, A Tale of Two Cities, and Twilight in Venice. Cloud suspected his closet love of romances sprung from his childhood. Denials, betrayals, passionate embraces - they were the dreams he never had, the dreams that would never come true. He felt those words more keenly than anything else in his dim childhood. They were his fantasies on paper, his imaginations running away from him. After all, who would possibly love him?

The door had opened quietly, and Cloud recalled he had been crying, but at the rasp of the door he had frozen, unable to draw breath. He and Seph had just gotten into their first fight. And now, Cloud knew his new older brother was coming to kill him.

In a way that only children could, he stilled and accepted it. Death was nothing new to him, he was well-acquainted with him, that black shroud that took away his mother. He could handle the emptiness that swallowed his heart whenever he thought about Death. He had touched it before.

_"Run to the other house!" _And then,_ "Don't forget my promise!"_

Even in his dreams, Cloud closed his eyes briefly in pain.

"Cloud?" The new brother inched closer. "Cloud," came that murmur again, so jarring in the silence, "I'm sorry." Sephiroth's eyes gleamed in the moonlight streaming in.

Cloud turned. For a long time they regarded each other, until Sephiroth gingerly lifted one corner of the blanket and asked, "May I get in?"

Cloud remembered wordlessly nodding.

Once he was settled, Cloud heard Seph speak up again. "Cloud," he heard that voice rumble through the bedsprings, "do you remember your mother's promise?"

_"Don't forget my promise!"_ How could he forget the screeching desperation in her Valkyrie shriek?

"To stay away from the Turks." Child-Cloud's voice was subdued.

"Obey her," Sephiroth instructed. Cloud could do that. Cloud knew he could instantly trust that voice of authority, smooth and certain, an anchor in his tumultous life. Timdily he reached out as he had never before, feeling, feeling - there. His little, birdlike fingers found Sephiroth's hand. In an instant his older brother gripped it, squeezed it, and then scooted closer until they were shoulder-to-shoulder, arm-to-arm, Cloud's foot pressed carefully against Sephiroth's thigh.

Still half-asleep, Cloud knew there were tears on his face. He trusted his brother, even though he knew Sephiroth had become what he had told Cloud to avoid. Still, he thought he could help keep Yazoo and Loz out of reach, at least. He could - he _had to_ - trust the brother of his heart. His older brother in everything but blood. In a world of confusion, Sephiroth alone had taken his hand.

They had never done that again.

Tears fell freely. He could feel them stinging his cheeks with their salt. Agony filled him, welling in the barren pocket where his chest should be. They had been such good brothers. And then - it became cold, muffled, forever distant radio static when Seph became a Turk.

----------

Kadaj moaned and covered his head with his pillow. "Nii-saan," he moaned again. Cloud sat up straight, backed as far as he could without falling outright off the bed, and struggled to remember how to breathe. Basic body function. That's right, lungs expand while air goes in and then they collapse when you breathe out. _Ah - shit_, suddenly the dream hit him like a freight train. Hysteria collected in his throat and he fought not to scream, laugh as if he had nothing left for him in this world...

"What. the. HELL are you doing in my BED!" he ground out finally.

Kadaj moved his pillow aside enough to fix Cloud with one muted green eye. "Congratulations, nii-san," he drawled, "you are now ready to become the next Queen of Pop. With those octaves, I bet you'll win some hefty admirers. Now if you'd just put on a nice long blonde wig -"

"Get OUT!" Cloud gathered up whatever scrap of dignity hadn't been holepunched through with the sarcasm of Kadaj's last statement and began pushing his youngest brother off the bed. _For god's sake_, he wanted to rail, _I asked Zack to put us in a room with two beds for a reason!_ Kadaj flailed sleepily, finally deciding he could continue sleeping in his enjoyably warm cocoon if he clung tight enough to the blond's arm. "_Kadaj!_," Cloud hissed exasperately. Zack was in the next room - he probably heard Cloud's first scream of dismay and was listening intently at the door as they struggled.

Amused, his brother gave a snort of laughter. "Why, with that whine, you'd easily pass for a girl, nii-san."

Despite his better judgement, Cloud looked down his arm to the smiling, adorable silver-haired teen hanging off of him...and huffed in defeat. It was cold, and they _were_ warmer sleeping in one bed. He supposed he could introduce his brother's head to the floor some other time. Preferably more painfully and with more exaggerated motions. It was just he didn't know _what_ he would say or do if Kadaj caught him during one of THOSE dreams - gallingly _again_. The entire prospect of fleeing an international mafia with his insanely attractive younger brother-cum-love interest seemed incredibly _stupid_, suddenly.

"Given up?"

"Let go of my arm. I need to close the window."

Kadaj complied. Cloud felt the sting of cold against his skin, a numbing shiver against his collarbones up to the roots of his hair. He thought about his dream. He didn't know when he knew Sephiroth had become a Turk, but he knew he had been denying it to himself for a damn long time. As casually as he could, he wiped his face with the sleeve of his temporary sleep clothes (borrowed from Zack, and three sizes larger - though he took comfort in the fact Kadaj looked even more ridiculous than he did), and stared out over the whirling snow. He wanted to lose himself into it. The impulse was sharp, jolting in its pressure, and then it was gone, with only one thought: _Sephiroth, if you had told me to die back then, I would gladly done so._

"Nii-san," said Kadaj quietly from behind him, "come back to bed." Cloud smiled humorlessly at his own black thoughts.

_As soon as I find a way, I'll send for Yazoo and Loz_, he promised himself and Kadaj mentally.

He slipped back into bed. Kadaj's voice was still quiet when he asked, "Are you mad at me, nii-san?"

"You know it's not easy to get me mad."

Reaching up, Kadaj brushed the melted snow from his cheeks. Cloud stayed impossibly still, heart so numb from the anguish of his dream he couldn't even find strength to blush or to brush Kadaj's seeking fingers away. "Nii-san," that hushed whisper came again in the dark, "were you crying?"

"Don't be silly." Cloud even smiled, a small, defeated expression.

"You don't be scared." The voice was petulant now - petulant, but trusting. "If you're scared, then I am too." And Cloud knew he was telling the truth.

In the dark, unconsciously, his smile softened in answer. One last question came from Kadaj. "Are you cold, nii-san?" That endearment, reserved only for Cloud, slipped past those lips like the _shh-shh_ of fine silk - like the elegance of needles and the delightful poison they injected - like the cold comfort of Vincent's red dream, never straying far from Cloud's immediate memory.

Clumsily Cloud reached into the darkness. "Not anymore," he answered, and held his brother's hand through the night.


	20. Like This

Trapdoor (Part 20)

by anza (14.12.05)

He'd heard of SOLDIER. Who hadn't? Kadaj had three pairs of them, and he'd brought all of them on this trip. They were by far the most comfortable jeans on the Continent, if not the world. Even Cloud had a pair - tighter than he liked them, but they were stretch jeans and he looked good enough in them to pass for a teenager, so who was he to complain?

Cloud hadn't been aware the headquarters were in Nibelheim, but once Zack explained the cloth could only be cultured in certain temperatures for the right strength and flexibility, he took it in stride. "And it's just great you're here," Zack concluded with a dazzling flash of teeth, "because my last sales manager just died and you're just _perfect_ for the job, Rowe!"

Warning bells went off in his head. Carefully Cloud asked, "How so?"

"Because you're so beautiful, of course! People will appeal to you immediately, don't worry!" Cloud and Kadaj followed the dark-haired man deeper into the building. Zack murmured hearty "good mornings" to several, nods to other, and took paperwork from five more. By the time they reached his office on the second to top floor, they could barely see his dark head over the pile of thick manila folders. Cloud was still not assured; he saw this as no coincidence. _Did_ Zack know he had been head of the Sales Department in Shin-Ra Company? And _how_?

He hadn't risen there on purpose, as his childhood left him shy and avoidant of anyone. Grade school had floated through a haze of books, and then an accelerated course had taken him straight to high school and college. Sephiroth was already a higher-level grunt by the time he joined the ranks of Shin-Ra Company, eager to follow his brother. It was two years later when he saw Sephiroth in the hall, answering the Prince in a clipped, military tone, that Cloud realized he could no longer connect with the person standing in front of him. He had learned early that words were never enough, not to apologize, not to say the heart's most potent secrets - but it wasn't until then he realized the pain that accompanied them.

_We were such good brothers, Seph._

Had he left Yazoo and Loz there as a sort of second chance for Seph to redeem himself?

Rarely were things in life that easy.

Zack was answering Kadaj's questions easily, telling him he could be Cloud's secretary, wouldn't that be nice? and that Cloud would have an office all to himself on the floor right below Zack's, so if he wanted he could take a broom and knock the ceiling boards out to bother Zack on bad days. Cloud was silent, thinking, though Zack was making the prospect irresistable, and would know something was wrong if Cloud refused such a good position.

Still, he wanted he and Kadaj to live in comfort, and certainly this job could easily support the two of them.

Still, there were no such things in this world as coincidences. And this was already the fourth coincidence with Zack Darklighter. No two things about it; something was up with him, and Cloud would start digging the moment he sniffed a lead.

"We'll take it," he said softly when Zack paused long enough to take a breath.

The president of SOLDIER Jeans Co. inhaled, exhaled with a whoosh of relief, and gave a shake of his head. "One last thing to ask of you," he asked primly. Cloud nodded cautiously - as long as it was short of selling his soul to the Grinning Devil Zack was, he would certainly consider it.

"I want you guys to be in my next SOLDIER Jeans Co. commercial!" Zack's grin was so wide Cloud swore it could swallow the sea.

"Oh _HELL NO_," came his numb answer.

----------

He was dreaming again.

It was the past, like it always was. Cloud was peeking into Sephiroth's room as he ripped sparkling chords from his guitar, hair swinging wildly in time to the beat. "Here, you can try," Sephiroth murmured once he'd spotted his spy, and tentatively Cloud had brushed his eleven-year-old fingers over the strings. They were stiffer than he thought they would be. "Like this," Sephiroth curled his hands around Cloud's hands, until they were strumming together, one clumsy B-major chord that rolled up, rolled down, rolled up, rolled down. Cloud played it slower, faster, hearing each note vibrate through him into the hollow of Sephiroth's ribcage, pressed against his back. "Like this," and the chord changed to a C-major, an E-minor, a G-minor...

"Like this," Vincent kicked open the guitar case. Cloud knelt to watch. His lover's pale hands drew away the velvet on the top and unlatched the top compartment. There was ample space for a few changes of clothes as well as pockets for some random junk - maybe spare money, spare keys, a pocketbook with addresses. "And this too." With a professional snap Vincent closed the top compartment, rolled the velvet back, and reached back and pulled back the covering on the bottom compartment. Another click, and ice-cold fear washed down Cloud's spine. He was looking at the gleaming black of a rifle, fully loaded.

"You'll need it more than I will," Vincent promised.

"Like this," Kadaj spun, hands clenched around two potholders, a cookie tray in between them. "Try one?"

"Like this," Reeve took the Rubix Cube from him and spun it deftly. Seventeen turns later, all the colors were back in their respective spots. "Got all that?" Cloud shook his head mutely, amazed.

"Like this." A hundred thousand voices pressed at him, pushing things into his face, into his hands, at his chest. They told him he would need these things for the future. They told him he would need to be strong. They told him these things would prepare him for whatever might come his way. They whispered into his mind, but Cloud knew they weren't real, they weren't true, but when he tried to push them away, his hands only went through him.

He awoke.

---------

The desk was warm against his cheek. Kadaj stumbled in with a tottering pile of paperwork, dumped it on his desk disgustedly, and went back out again to answer the phone. Cloud suppressed a moan and picked up the first sheet from the stack. He barely understood what was being said about dyes and hems. He'd certainly had enough encounters with work unions, protests, and picketing - but Shin-Ra's PR sector had had half of that under control, not like SOLDIER Jeans Co. at all. Catching the main gist was that dyes used were too weak and needed to be developed on, he signed the paper and put it on the "Development Bureau" stack.

Kadaj stomped in a moment later. "How the hell do you keep so skinny if you're sitting on your butt all the time?" he grouched, moving his previous pile over and plopping another chin-high stack onto the desk.

Absently Cloud answered, "I eat well," and signed a statement releasing the numbers for the sales amount of the Cameo line to the public. Zack had told him earlier they were selling well...

"Rowe?" Kadaj took care not to say his real name out loud. "Are you feeling alright?"

Cloud looked up then, surprised at the simplicity of the question, and blinked owlishly for a moment before turning back to his work. What could he possibly say out loud? That he was having bad dreams? That he suspected Zack Darklighter to be a Turk?

He took a deep breath and let it out. _Tifa_, he remembered briefly. The time when she put her hands on his shoulders and massaged out the knots seemed like a lifetime ago. He wrenched his thoughts away; not any more. Never again.

"I'm alright," he answered, feeling his heart sink with every paper he signed.


	21. No Kids, Please

Trapdoor (Part 21)

by anza (16.12.05)

_Tifa._

He remembered the first time he met her. It wasn't anything like meeting Vincent, who shot him a look and hooked him in as easily as a baited fish. She had cast him a second look, but it hadn't been more than to memorize his face and name; she had to do that, especially when her customers were predominantly disgrunted Shin-Ra Company employees after a long day.

She, under the dim lamps, her hair ruffling softly every time the door opened. Dressed all in black, she swayed to the band playing something calm and rough, a soldier's song. All evening, Cloud watched her out of the corner of his eye, careful not to make full contact, but careful to make her see he was looking at her.

In a way he didn't think was possible, she instantly understood.

At first he thought he was being delusional. His social skills were flawed, and he was Vincent's to keep for a long, long time. Two weeks after his first meeting with them, Tifa closed down the bar for a few hours, invited her drummer friend Cid, and all four of them jammed. Cloud went insane on the lyrics, improvising them as he went - words, tearing out of his throat, tearing _out _his throat, his whole world pinpoint bright and psychedelic color. _Satisfied _was really the way to describe it, after that first time. Back then, he used the world to describe it in the coarse, brusque, physical way.

Nine months later, they were gone. The boys had come into Cloud's life, and he had to take care of the littlest one. Once he brought Kadaj with him, and felt increasingly startled every time he looked over in his direction and found those green eyes staring at him without flinching, without looking away at all. The owner of the bar died and Tifa took over; Cid got promoted to the head of his research facility; Vincent disappeared one night without a trace, without a note. Cloud entered a depression his brothers forcefully pulled him out of. He wasn't allowed to give up anymore.

But Tifa, her brown eyes shining with promise and hope, she was something Cloud wanted. He didn't mean it in the same way he would have meant it back then - like an object, or a thing. He meant it now as he would give what heart he could spare for her, he would take care of her, he would hold her hand and let her hold his. Maybe sometimes they would hold each other close in the night when the world became too much. Maybe someday he would slip that ring on her finger and tell her he wanted her, forever and ever.

He didn't want kids. He just wanted his brothers. But maybe Tifa could convince him otherwise of that too.

It wasn't riding into the sunset. He wasn't a knight. He wasn't perfect like that. He had his own problems, his own timidity, his own social awkwardness. Over the years he knew how to react to little things, and understood as long as he didn't put a toe out of line nothing really bad would happen to him that he wouldn't see a mile off. Cloud knew life was about predicting - predicting things between the beginning and the end. Smoothing the bumps in an otherwise horizontal line. Untying the knots in the red string of his life.

He thought Tifa would be part of his life forever since he met her, but now he knew better than to believe in forever.

----------

It never failed to surprise him how it didn't matter which company he was in, the meetings were all equally boring.

Cloud got the distinct feeling that even if Zack was the one presenting, dressed in a gorilla suit and attempting Wutaian with a Costa Del Sol accent, he wouldn't would be any more amused with the content of the papers in front of him. Of course, it would be rather amusing if it really happened. The most amazing part of the meeting so far was that Kadaj had not ceased to take notes on everything being said. The oldest brother had checked, and apparently the silver-haired teen was _really taking notes_. He would have to ask later if this was a result of having too many boring teachers and, consequentially, failing a lot of tests, leading to equally large amounts of ass-kissing. Certainly, he didn't remember his high school teachers being half as boring as hearing the differences between two centimeter difference between the side seams on the Cameo girls' line. _Who cares?_, he barely held back, _they're all anorexic and they'll all squeeze themselves into SOLDIER pants regardless of their size or our seams._

"Rowe?" Zack's voice pierced into his thoughts.

But Cloud was already getting up, moving to the head of the table. With a short, almost angry snap, he clicked open his presentation. Whisking through a graph, he explained since the sales had been declining for the Feline line under the girls' sector for the last seven-and-a-half months, there had actually been an overall effect on dieting pills and gym attendance. "Perhaps this is just conjecture, but SOLDIER pants have far, far more effect on the general population than people can think of," he explained, and then clicked to the next slide.

This was what Sales did - surveys. He showed a slew of comments on how wonderful SOLDIER jeans were from both male and female buyers. Underlying all of them was the sense that people had to conform to the size of jeans. "By far we are the most affordable jeans on the Continent. The charts don't say that because there are too many competitors on the Continent," he clicked to the next slide to show what he meant, "but that's looking in the wrong place. What you need to look at is this," he showed another chart that showed the amount of jeans being smuggled into Wutai by brand, in which SOLDIER jeans soared over the rest of the companies. "This is a sign of two things - one, that we're not tight enough on our factories, and two, that despite our decline, our popularity has spread beyond everything this company can think of."

"How do you propose to use this popularity?" Zack and everyone else's eyes were on him.

Cloud felt self-conscious for only a moment, and then launched into speech. "We need to branch out into other areas," he said in one breath, and felt the murmurs start.

----------

It was Christmas.

Kadaj slept with his back to Cloud. Despite Cloud's continued attempts to get him to sleep in the other bed, it remained as it had the first morning after Kadaj had remade it, quilts tucked in neatly under the pillow. Early-on Kadaj had stolen Cloud's pillow - he didn't mind, he didn't need it. The bed was comfortably warm, their backs barely touching. Zack had bid them goodnight like a parent or an older brother rather than Cloud's superior, and for the first time upon meeting him, Cloud felt relaxed. He wasn't supposed to, he knew, and he knew there was something about Zack that hit warning bells _everywhere_...

...but Zack, in that moment, had looked at him with his eyes full of warmth and no guile at all, and Cloud had startled, and then smiled back. His face and his mood had lifted before his instincts could catch them. Oddly, he felt as if he had done this somewhere before...

It was the first Christmas without Yazoo and Loz since they came. It didn't even snow in Midgar. Here in Nibelheim, snowflakes had started whirling two months ago. All the same, they'd put up the tree, hung up ornaments: a relic cork snowman Kadaj had made when he was five and he'd hung on his backpack the day he arrived on Cloud's doorstep; five gold beaten designs from National Parks; a dog he'd bought at an after-Christmas sale last year; Yazoo's gift to their little family two years ago, a tiny picture frame with Cloud, Loz and Kadaj half-hidden in the smoke issuing from their newly blown-up stove; memories, falling through his mind like the crystal drops of tears, each one impacting upon the pavement with a soft, unconscious stab through his heart.

Behind him, Kadaj shifted, curled into a ball, and Cloud wished needlessly that he was alone. Not because he felt he needed to keep walls up when his youngest brother was around - he _did_, after all, have to be strong - but because he found the comfort in feeling sad so aching in his soul he was sure that even if he _was_ alone, he would be holding it in. The hysteria in his situation and in the back of his throat was still building; it would take only a little more to send him into a fit of rage or tears, which ever struck his fancy when it hit.

_My brothers._ He held them all close to his heart, furiously as the tears that pricked the back of his eyes but he refused to let loose, afraid if he let them out, they would somehow tear the precarious future laid out in front of him. There was nothing for him in Midgar now except for his vow to get Yazoo and Loz out. He would get Kadaj somewhere safe, and then...

No. He had to think of now. He had to get Kadaj to safety _now_, regardless of Yazoo and Loz. They would understand. Above all, the youngest and the most naive had to survive. He closed his eyes, certain of this above all the confusion of the past few days.

_I have to be strong_, he thought, and drifted off to sleep.


	22. The Best of Nibelheim

Trapdoor (Part 22)

by anza (17.12.05)

Cloud was a blur of movement in the living room. The sofas and the table had all been pushed or leaned against the surrounding walls, and he was practicing there in the middle. His left fist shot out, his entire body following that movement into the next position, and then the next, and the next. He thought about nothing but the perfection of each kata, one flowing into the next. In some of his more poetic moments he likened the sensation to that of stretching his mind as well as his body to their limits. With the precise control of each outstretched hand, each kick, each maneuver, it was as if his mind was trickling down into each cell in his body. The rawness of the exercise was exhilarating, and channeled all of his frustrations into one single point of concentration.

He was so lost in it he reacted instinctively when he felt someone else enter his makeshift practice area. Lashing out with one foot, the intruder caught it and let go after a tense moment. Cloud turned, and saw it was Zack.

His new boss tilted his head and gave him a look. "I must say," he began conversationally, "when I let you push all the furniture to the walls, this wasn't exactly what I was expecting." But even with the condescending undertone of those words, his eyes and his smile betrayed his amusement.

For a moment Cloud was confused. "Why else would I push all the furniture to the walls?"

Zack shrugged. "Invite me for a game of Twister?"

Cloud gave a long stare at the other before he threw up his hands and huffed. Zack unsuccessfully suppressed a snicker and helped Cloud push the furniture back to their original places. While Zack babbled in the background about how he should vacuum and wouldn't it be nice if Cloud helped, Cloud pondered how people like Zack passed kindergarten and then went on to become responsible adults. Emphasis on the _responsible_.

It was Saturday, the first weekend since he and Kadaj arrived. True to Zack and various other now-coworkers' impressions, it had been a good thing the last sales manager died, as he had been seventy, senile, and useless without his secretary. His secretary, unfortunately, had been recently fired for embezzling funds. So basically, Cloud had to start from square one on understanding just what was expected of him.

Now, up to his eyeballs in paperwork he didn't understand, he _had_ planned to spend the entire weekend hammering out the fine details to an actual plan to "branch out" SOLDIER Jeans Co.'s products. He had been thinking strictly short and jean skirts - others had thought of jean journals and binders and similar stationary products, but Cloud rather thought it would challenging enough to create shorts and skirts, given he was completely green at the whole industry.

Unfortunately, Zack clearly had a different definition of "productive" than Cloud had.

"No, no," he was heard muttering as Cloud scanned yesterday's stock reports with a frown on his face. Kadaj dove facefirst into his cereal and was only rescued when Zack yanked his head back up. He had spent all of Christmas Eve and Day filing correct reports into their respective drawers. Before everything else, Cloud knew he had to clear up the confusion on just _how_ much the secretary embezzled. The hearing was set for sometime next year; Cloud filed the date into the back of his mind, trusting himself to remember when the time came. Cloud had stayed up equally late on Christmas Eve and Day, but he was far more used to pulling all-nighters at work when Tax Day, bimonthy checks from other departments, discussions with Scarlet, Reeve, Rufus, or all three took them far into the morning so that sometimes they bunked down right there in their offices on empty stomachs.

Cloud could admit to himself that he terribly missed Yazoo and Loz and all of gray, sleet-covered, overcast Midgar in all its drab depression. That was why he welcomed the chance to work nonstop, even through a holiday as important as Christmas.

But it seemed Zack had other ideas. "ARGH," he threw up his hands in frustration, and leveled a glare at Cloud. "Can't you two do anything but work?" Cloud considered pointing out Kadaj was indeed NOT working, but asleep and drooling quite happily on the kitchen table, and then thought better of it after seeing Zack's fuming face. He turned his attention back to the television on the countertop - and then found himself staring straight into Zack's bright eyes. Kadaj slept blissfully on.

Was Zack _pouting_?

"We're going out," Zack announced after a moment, and jerked Kadaj upright. Pushing them both back into their rooms ("Hey, wait, I'm not done with my cereal yet!" Cloud privately wondered if his brother COULD finish his cereal half-asleep, and squashed a particularly vicious train of thought that commented it would be rather funny to see Kadaj try), he yelled into the door, "And be dressed for cold weather!"

Cloud stared at the smooth grain of the door for a moment before changing into a pair of thick pants and several sweaters. Yawning widely, Kadaj did the same, stumbling halfway across the room to his own set of drawers. Pulling out a pair of SOLDIERs as Cloud watched, Kadaj blinked sleepily through his dwindling number of shirts before choosing a red one, along with a thick wool zip-up. "What're we doing again?"

"I'm gonna show you the best Nibelheim has to offer," came Zack's muffled shout through the door.

Cloud glanced out the window where snowflakes were still falling steadily and in increasing amounts. _Can't we see the best of Nibelheim from our window?_ he thought sarcastically, and bit back a yawn himself.

----------

"It's alright," Zack coaxed.

"It is NOT alright!" Cloud shot back. Between them, Kadaj watched their argument shuttle back and forth like a tennis match.

"We just won't order anything for him, alright? I can charm the bartender, just watch -"

"I don't want to watch!" yelped Cloud defensively. "And I especially don't want _Kane_ to watch! For god's sake, Zack, he's nineteen and he's not legal yet!"

Zack laughed cheerfully, puffs of white issuing from his mouth with every shake. "Aww, don't spoil the fun for him!" Cloud caught a glimpse of Kadaj's hopeful green eyes and mentally groaned. "C'mon, you wanna go in, don't you, Kane?"

"Well, if Rowe doesn't want to -," Kadaj began with a sliding, more apprehensive look towards his brother.

"Nonsense! Rowe's just being a stick in the mud. Bend or break, you know." In an all-too-friendly manner, Zack slung an arm over the silver-haired teen's shoulders and began walking all three of them to the entrance. "Don't worry about it! I know the manager of this club. He'll let us in."

Heartbeat pounding his ears, Cloud tried his best to school his features into a blank look as Zack paid for the two of them and flashed a gold card at the man collecting money. He didn't even glance up from the cash register as he waved the three of them in. Once inside, Cloud immediately began sweating, as it was hot with all the writhing bodies on the dance floor. They stacked their coats at a table upstairs and a little ways back so the music didn't blare right into their ears, and then Zack went to get drinks. Kadaj's eyes were shining with excitement, but with an unspoken promise to keep his mouth shut of any secrets they were keeping.

"What do you think about Zack?" Kadaj had completely shaken off all drowsiness around noon, and now, at ten at night, he was wide awake. _Like some nocturnal animal_, Cloud thought with a smile.

"He can't be trusted," Cloud answered.

"He seems nice enough."

"Appearances are deceiving." He remembered Vincent, and how that abnormally quiet man at work changed into a predatorial prowler at night. In hindsight, he wondered how they had kept their relationship for so long. Vincent almost never kept partners for more than a few nights at a time. What had made Cloud so alluring? So different? Was it because Vincent couldn't have avoided him at work anyway?

"Drinks all around!" Zack returned with three drinks, one a tall blue one with an umbrella and two more ordinary-looking ones, one gold-tan and the other clear with bubbles. Kadaj took the Sprite without question or complaint, though he gave Zack's electric blue monstrosity several glances. Cloud gave a half-smile at Zack's drink of choice and sipped his whiskey wordlessly.

"Is it radioactive?" Kadaj finally asked. The three of them broke into chuckles.

They talked about this and that. Zack described (in further detail than before) the people Cloud had to work with, smiling all the while. When it came time for Cloud to reveal a little more of his and Kadaj's origins, he found he had fun making up stuff. Now, it was established Kane was the little brother of one of his former coworkers, a man named Severus Snape who liked to eat overripe oranges - until he died of food poisoning. He talked about Tifa and Vincent and Cid fondly, though with completely different names. He made no mention of Yazoo or Loz. After a while, as Kane stared at the dancers below with a half-yearning look, Cloud realized he had been talking for almost three-quarters of an hour.

He gave a surprised start and smiled. He didn't need to hide the genuity of it. "I've almost never talked so much in my life," he admitted. He traced the rim of his empty glass idly, embarrassed. "Something about you, Zack...it makes people open up so easily." Mentally he told himself he would be more aware next time, though in the course of his talk he carefully censored everything that might characteristic of Cloud Strife and his missing youngest brother.

Zack gave a fond smile in return. "It's good hearing you talk," he encouraged. "I thought you were a silent type...but once you get going, you don't clam up! It's good to get things out. I get the feeling you needed that, Rowe. That's why I invited us all here." Those bright eyes - Cloud felt all at once comforted and repelled by them. He wasn't sure why Zack stirred such conflicting sentiment in him, but it was unsettling he couldn't remember.

"I'm kinda antisocial."

Zack's eyes twinkled briefly. "I noticed."

"I'm not easy to get along with. I don't know how to act around people."

"You're doing real well so far." Zack's voice was so soft Cloud felt he could fall into the black velvet of it.

Sometime later, he awoke on the dance floor. Above, he met Kadaj's green eyes, staring over the side of the balcony. His body ached, but it ached even more for the throb of music streaming in his veins. Zack pulled him forward until they were so close Cloud could smell the other's cologne, sharp with sweat. Something fierce in him cried out then, and he threw himself into the mix of music, touch and _now_. He hadn't danced in so long - hadn't danced like this since Vincent, Vincent who had stolen him away and returned him right when he didn't expect it.

And now Zack, keen eyes hovering so seductively over him, hands appreciating every dip, every cleft that Vincent used to trace, Cloud fought to let loose that naive, powerful emotion of his younger days. Something raw and physical like the drip of sweat down his chin that morning. Something as powerful as feeling Zack's shoulderblades pressing against the palms of his hands, and then tracing the line of his spine, until he reached his waist and pressed them fast together, so close to dancing as one person...

Cloud was crying because he was feeling the world then, tingling at the end of his oversensitive fingertips, because something in him broke with the ecstasy around him, because there was something in Zack that made him want to forget all else. The trapdoor loomed like some forgotten fairy tale for a moment, but then it flitted away without a sound. Zack, his arms around him, their cheeks against each other's, their hands grasping, groping for each other, wondering if this was what they had spent all their lives searching for.

Cloud had never felt so close to knowing the answer.

He didn't know he was crying, because Zack was there, lips tracing the liquid sadness, licking it away before it could ever touch the ground and cause him any unhappiness.

Cloud had never wanted a savior more than he did in that frenzied night.

---------

_Author's notes:_

_After seeing how many reviews I've gotten, I figured it was about time for a real author's note. I used to post these almost every chapter (as you can see in some of my older fics), but I gave up on those, as they seemed conceited of me to presume anyone would want to read them. However, seeing the spate of sincere encouragement, I guess I want to give a shout out to all the people who've stuck with this. I really, reallyappreciate it, it flatters me that people have called me a genius. It also flatters me that some people can't see where this is going - which is exactly what I was aiming for. I didn't think my writing properly conveyed that enough...but it seems, for you guys, you really like Trapdoor. It touches me and makes me blush, so many have taken the time to read and enjoy it like I wanted._

_As for darksphire's question about a prequel - eh, I haven't seriously thought about that. After Trapdoor, I've planned/sorta written a sequel that goes more in depth about mafia, what they do and how they go about accumulating so much money. Admittedly, I had thought about a "three brothers" story, about their lives beforehand, and developing the Cloud-and-his-brothers dynamic, but...that's all up in the air for right now. It does seem a bit vague, the storyline - but it all straightens out, I promise._

_As for Vincent and Cloud...ah, well, THAT is a story I might want to grapple with before any "Trapdoor from Kadaj's POV!" fics start appearing in my story box. I know it seems kind of random, since Vincent isn't in the story, and everything is from Cloud's POV, but... /whistles innocently/._

_I'm kinda interested in hearing some of your predictions on what's going to happen next. Mostly, I'm interested in your predictions of "Who the hell is Zack and what is his connection to Cloud?", "What is Cloud going to do to get him and Kadaj away from the Turks?", "Is Zack really a Turk? And what is Cloud going to do about it if he is?", and finally, "Why did Vincent leave?" _

_Toodles, then, and I look forward to your predictions. /evil laughter/ I almost feel bad, because I know what's going to happen - but then, you guys will know too, soon enough._

_--anza sumeragi (6.11.06)_


	23. Who Was He Calling?

Trapdoor (Part 23)

by anza (17.12.05)

_This isn't right_, he thought, frowning. The coffee room was a-bustle at this early hour. A Wedge, Biggs and Luke hailed him from the other side of the room, but he was too confounded in his reports to wave back. Kadaj took three seconds to lift his head and wave instead.

Smuggling reports were generally collected by the border police, who collected goods and evidence they would use to pass more anti-smuggling laws. The people who actually resorted the goods were a branch of the customs office. It wasn't even the Sales Department that was in charce of receiving reclaimed goods - it was Company Security. Thus, Cloud couldn't be sure of the reports coming to him, but at least he could isolate where the root of the problem began.

The problem was that even though Cloud had increased police prescence at the factories, smuggling rates of SOLDIER jeans had not gone down.

For a moment, Cloud considered getting Company Security to handle it. Rude, the man in charge, certainly looked as if he could do it. But given Zack Darklighter was president and under suspicion, Cloud resigned himself to the fact he would have to handle this one by himself. Perhaps it was too flashy a show of autonomy and independence, especially since hadn't even been here a month and had already changed or suggested a lot of things. But as he would be compliant with Rude and Zack's instructions, and the problem HAD started in his department, he figured he could probably get away with it, as long as no new factors popped up unexpectedly.

Given smuggling SOLDIER jeans was so prevalent before, Cloud knew there had be some reason the police were turning a blind eye. Most likely it was money, a bribe of some sort. He couldn't imagine someone coercing the police, not even the Turks, since turning in a Turk would be more profitable in money and reputation than a bribe. Cloud tapped his finger on his desk and mused over that. With the options available, all he could really do was follow a money trail. No matter; all SOLDIER Jeans Co. employee profiles were open to managers.

He frowned. But even if he discovered a money trail straight to Zack, he couldn't incrimiate him. His goal as Sales Department Manger Rowe Christopher would be to prove his president was illegally using funds. But his goal as Cloud Strife was to prove Zack Darklighter was a Turk.

The blond mulled over it a little more, then let it go. Perhaps there would be a way to prove Zack illegally using funds and a Turk when the time came. And that was only if he really DID find a money trail leading straight ot the Company President. For now, he would content himself with running searches on each employed policemens' bank account records.

Three hours later, he scribbled down the handful of numbers he narrowed it down to, hoping one of them contained a bribe. He wasn't even sure it was legal to have employees' recent bank transaction records in the database, but hey, if they were already there, who could blame him for using them? Especially since he was researching a problem in his own sector?

The office doorknob turned with a click, and Cloud looked up in time to see Kadaj saunter in, a stack of files under one arm and two giant steaming cardboard cups in the other. Cloud blinked as the scent wafted towards him, and then slowly smiled. It seemed Kadaj's childhood tastes hadn't changed even in the face of crisis - the aroma of hot chocolate distinctly came from the cup the teen claimed for himself.

They sipped in silence for a while, and then Kadaj spoke up. "Rowe? What are you going to do about the new products you talked about at the meeting? Zack and Luke have been asking about them."

Personally, Cloud felt memorizing the deluge of new names was the worst part about being a newcomer at a company. He reached into a drawer and pulled out the proposal he hammered out all last Sunday, and plopped it in front of his brother. "Make five copies for each department and leave them in the mailboxes of the managers and executive staff. Zack wants everyone updated on the new stuff." Briefly he rubbed the palms of his hands against his tired eyes. "Thanks for the coffee, Kane. I needed that."

Kadaj was silent for a moment, so still Cloud thought he'd said something wrong. But when the silver-haired teenager spoke up again, his voice was the same mild tone he'd used since they'd gotten on the train, "Is there anything else you need?"

And then that moment of silence between them passed, as Cloud shoved a while notepad of people and phone numbers for Kadaj to call back. It was only after Kadaj had gone did he feel that maybe he wanted Kadaj to stay, just a little longer.

----------

_"Don't forget my promise!"_

_"Obey her."_

The field was hazy, as if the camera lens hadn't been cleaned in many years. Cloud knew this was a memory, a very early one. Frowning, his younger self marched through the grass determindly, looking left and right.

A strange sensation rippled through Cloud as his child-self opened his mouth to shout, "NII-SAAAN!" into the open air of the winter sky above. Cloud froze, puzzled. He never called anyone "nii-san" in his childhood. Even Sephiroth had remained strictly "Seph" in their most comfortable moments. Who was he calling?

A flash of recognition made him stumble mentally, and then the bright, knowing eyes of Zack Darklighter faded back into the darkness of not-dream. _Zack._ Why was he suddenly reminded of Zack? Shrugging off the growing feeling of unease he got at the name, Cloud surmised the person his child-self was looking for probably had similar features.

Time wore on; Cloud got the idea he had been out here for hours and hours, little heart beating tenaciously in his ribcage with every shout of "Nii-san!". White breath wisped and then disappeared in the cold air. Even though Cloud knew he was physically warm in his bed with Kadaj right next to him, he couldn't help but give a shudder. Only, he wasn't sure whether it was because of the cold in his dream or because he felt his dream-self shouting so desperately, his little voice calling and calling to nobody in the bitter, nipping freeze of Midgar's winter.

Dark fell. _Now_ Cloud recognized the scene.

Little Cloud watched as, one by one, the houses on the other side of the riverbank turned on, mere glimmers in the distance. In his search he had wandered far into the abandoned field. He was freezing now, his little hands had a blue tinge even _he_ could see in the fading light. _Seph's gonna be mad at me_, he thought, and then pushed the thought away viciously. _I don't need Seph! Who needs a brother like Seph? All I need is nii-san._

_Again_, Cloud reflected in confusion, hearing his younger self's thoughts. _Just who is this "nii-san"?_ He brought Zack's image up from the depths of his conscience, staring, wondering, pondering, but nothing came to mind, not even a fleeting blur of color or sound. All there was was wariness, a sense of foreboding that he should be far away with Kadaj in tow, and that somewhere - _somewhere_ before Costa Del Sol - he had met Zack Darklighter, had looked into those auburn-brilliant eyes...

A rustle, and child-Cloud turned though Cloud knew what would happen next. In the dream, the pain of Sephiroth's fist was muted, a dull throb that sparked in the blood under his skin for a moment, and then was lost to time. Cloud, in his younger self, stumbled back, trapped within the memory, staring up at Sephiroth fearfully. His adoptive older brother loomed over him, flashlight flickering in the golden tendrils of dead grass. Cloud didn't dare to ask how he had found him. "What are you DOING HERE!" the older boy barked, and Cloud cringed along with his child-self, all courage and defiance melting in an instant.

He opened his mouth to reply, and a torrent of half-formed images assaulted Cloud for a moment: dilapidated bulidings; hiding behind a smelly trashcan; the thrill of holding something he'd just stolen in his hands; the first and last time he was caught; the taste of food he'd earned, scalding hot and delicious in his mouth; a boy whose face was so fuzzy Cloud could only make out the outline of dark hair and the set of shoulders, achingly familiar, yet Cloud couldn't understand _why_...

Child-Cloud never got the chance to answer, as he was pulled to his feet and marched back home pronto. The warm house was a relief for his knocking limbs, his whole body trembling so badly it seemed incredible his soul hadn't shaken itself free yet. Only blurred images came after that, as his surrogate parents fed him, draped endless blankets around him, sat him in his customary chair at the kitchen table, murmuring questions but getting no answers from his chattering lips. Cloud only watched Sephiroth, regarding him cooly from the opposite end of the room, near the staircase, before the silver-haired boy turned and went upstairs. As a child, Cloud could read nothing in those eyes, though he had a hunch Sepihroth had actually been worried for him.

In the darkened hours of the morning, Cloud awoke again, like he had nights before, and wondered if such dreams were prophecies or clues sent from whoever reigned up above. Feeling his heart beat hard and fast in his chest, he hoped it was not either.


	24. A Very Gay Man

Trapdoor (Part 24)

by anza (19.12.05)

The day after New Years, the brothers were walking briskly towards the SOLDIER headquarters. The two of them paused at the same cafe, bought the same drinks they had for the last three weeks, and then continued on to work. The rest of the employees were all on paid vacations, but Cloud figured if he and Kadaj put in one last good day of work while everyone else was taking a break, they could be well and truly caught up on everything.

They were about halfway there when Kadaj turned to the blond and asked, "Nii-san, are you feeling alright?"

At the moment, he had been wracking his brains for a way to prove Zack was a Turk. "Huh," he replied intelligently, and then added belatedly, "Yeah, yeah, I'm alright." Frustrated, he went over everything he had, and _still_ came up with no answer. Zack Darklighter remained hazy in his memories and irritating in cold reality as he had been when Cloud first met him.

There was a rustle, and then Cloud stopped abruptly, because Kadaj was standing right in front of him. From the sudden clearness in his youngest brother's eyes, he'd obviously been missing something while he'd been busying puzzling out Zack. "_Nii-san_," he ground out, obviously irritated, "you're not hearing me."

"I _am_." It sounded ridiculously flimsy even to his ears.

"You are _not_." Tossing his empty hot chocolate cup into the nearest trash can, Kadaj crossed his arms almost poutily and continued, "You've been working nonstop since we got here. You don't talk to me, you don't take me out like you used to, you don't even drink oolong tea like you used to!" He stepped forward, and Cloud almost took a step backwards from their close proximity. He could feel the heat from Kadaj's coat right from where he stood - oh no, oh _no_, he'd been ignoring the trapdoor successfully for the last three weeks by burying himself in his work, why did Kadaj have to bring this sensation up NOW?

His brother was speaking again. "...I don't know when you turned into a workaholic, but you need to stop! You're wearing yourself down and worse, you're wearing ME down! We're supposed to be running from the Turks, right, so tell me, why aren't we running? Certainly you're not planning to stay here, are you?"

Cloud stared at him for a moment, and then looked away. Despite his jilting upbringing, he had been pretty well sheltered once Sephiroth's family took him in. He had graduated high school and college early according to his accelerated learning courses, he had entered Shin-Ra Company without a problem, and once he was there, he rose to the top. The comfortable yuppie lifestyle _did_ appeal to him, and he was loathe to give it up. That was why, even above all misgivings, he had accepted Zack's offer, even if it seemed suspicious beyond belief. And...

...and, he was willing to admit, Zack attracted him somewhat. Not (just) physically, but as a friend as well. Shin-Ra Company didn't exactly provide friends among executives, but Cloud _had_ missed the easy camaradie shared from late night meetings and over sickening amounts of Wutaian takeout. Going to the bar and watching other people, putting in a shy word here and there. Watching Tifa, letting her extract him out of his shell. Zack seemed like one big friendly package with a job offer. Things were never that easy in real life. Yet...Cloud wanted to trust something. He had trusted and been betrayed all his life. Sephiroth had turned into a Turk. Possibly everyone in Shin-Ra except for him was a Turk. Now he was trusting again, knowing his heart and his trust would be broken again...but he wanted hope, that frail little bird rattling in his ribcage, to come out and prove him wrong for once.

He was in a world of cutthroats, business and mafia, and he was trusting Zack on hope.

"Nii-san!" Kadaj's eyes were angry, a very light green that showed he was past annoyance. "You -"

The trapdoor under their feet had to be rid of first. Right. He began walking again, slower to show he didn't mean to escape his brother's questions, and gulped down the rest of his coffee quickly so he wouldn't be interrupted halfway. "Listen," he began, and glanced to see he really did have all of Kadaj's attention, "I don't mean to push the two of us this hard. It's just - you can't tell, can't you? That I want to... _escape_." They stopped outside of a newsstand, where Zack's face grinned from the sidebar of the morning paper. "I...I failed, Kadaj. I _failed_. Failed to bring Yazoo and Loz with me."

Silence, but the thought hung in the air with little malice. It was a statement, and one admitted with some pain, but Cloud knew Kadaj was just chewing it over. "So you bury yourself in work," the teen asked finally. "You used to be such a slacker at the company."

"That was after you guys came." _And after Vincent left_, he added mentally. "I realized that now that I had responsibility for people other than myself, I needed to push myself harder. Do...do you remember Vincent?" The silver-haired teenager started to shake his head, and then caught himself. "The picture in my wallet?" There were times where he didn't want to lock his bike so they could go into the convenience store together, and had just simply handed Kadaj his wallet. With that reminder, Kadaj nodded hesitantly. "The man in black and red is Vincent. He left because I started ignoring everything but work. That's when I realized working wasn't the only thing I could provide for you - hence the slacking. I didn't realize I wanted someone to depend on me until the three of you came. I didn't realize I had a need for people that ran that deep. Vincent...he was dependent, and I thought I would be happy with that. But taking children is a full-time job, and after I realized how precious all of you were, I realized I had to protect you, had to provide you the best of the best. It was no less than my very responsibility, something I vowed when I first saw the smile on your faces when you sipped my hot chocolate."

Something had warmed in his youngest brother's eyes as he spoke, and now Kadaj was smiling faintly, as lost in the past as he was. "And you...feel the need to provide for me?" Cloud nodded. "By working both of us to death?"

"It kept our minds off of Yazoo and Loz, didn't it?" The truth was laid out, bare and bleak.

There was a light brush of gloved hands on his arm. "Nii-san." That voice was so soft, so calm, rippling gently through Cloud as if it physically brushed the burden from his overworked shoulders. "Nii-san, you're so strong. But you still haven't asked one important question yet."

There was something flickering in those eyes, something that made Cloud's desire jump with hope, against all attempts to squash it. "Why did I come on this trip?"

----------

The first time he realized he saw the shadow of the trapdoor was _not_ when they practiced dancing. It was almost a year ago, when they had been shopping together at the mall, just the two of them, and Kadaj had waggled one eyebrow almost suggestively at him, then dragged him into a girl's lingerie store for kicks.

Admist the Valentine's Day craze, the two of them wandered through the reds and pinks and whites, Kadaj trying not to stare at the...lacy-er ones, Cloud looking out into space until he noticed the saleswoman was wondering why he was staring at one of the dangling posters of their most scantilly clad models. With an exasperated sigh, he yanked them both out of the store before Kadaj did anything stupid (like buying one of the panties to give to Yazoo during Christmas - that was why they were in there in the first place. Cloud had rolled his eyes and told him if he really wanted to get Yazoo a gag gift, he could certainly get panties cheaper at the neighborhood superstore).

Once outside, Kadaj burst into chuckles. "Nii-san," he said, "your face! You look like you'd rather someone caught you naked in the bathroom reading porn or something!"

Three stores down, Cloud led the two of them into a CD store. His mind was, on one hand, trying to come up with some comeback for Kadaj's comment, but instead he was seeing inappropriate half-images of Kadaj in lingerie. No matter how he tried, he couldn't shake it out of his head. He understood, of course, that his sixteen-year-old brother was attractive, and dangerously so, but it had never struck him as hard as it did in that moment. He snuck a glance at the silver-haired teen through the various signs and promotions littered through the store.

Kadaj was quietly listening to an alternative artist, black adjustable headphones over his ears, eyes half-closed in enjoyment. He bobbed his head lightly in time to the beat, his hair swinging lightly to cover his ears. Cloud didn't know how many times he had told Kadaj to either chop it into bangs he could look out of, part his hair from the middle like Yazoo, or use a freaking hairclip. Now, watching as it brushed into those green eyes, hazed in enjoyment, he quickly looked back down at his own selections.

Thoughts crowded his head. He wondered if Kadaj would like the things he bought. He wondered if Kadaj would ever take his advice - he wondered if he could hold his hand. Strange, tentative, and hopelessly hopeful...stupid, insane, and very possibly the end of his reputation if he found out - but in one crystal clear moment, it hit him like a freight train between the eyes that Cloud Strife, Sales Bureau Executive Manager, was a very gay man and his attractive younger brother was unbearably single.

His first rebuke was that it wasn't "younger" brother. It was "youngest".

His second rebuke was that he really, really, _REALLY_ needed to get laid.

----------

They were standing outside of the SOLDIER complex when Cloud tried to answer Kadaj's question. "You...knew I wouldn't last alone?"

"Partly." Kadaj's eyes showed nothing, but there was...some pride in that voice. As if he was completely immersed in his conviction for whatever reason he was there.

"You wanted to help me."

"It's simpler than that."

_"He wants you, nii-san."_ Yazoo's voice rippled through his mind, churning up waves of discomfort.

But this was the last guess. A little part of him sparked in amusement, feeling ironic even though there was nothing ironic about the situation. _What the hell_..., he thought resignedly, _might as well give it a try._ "Was it that you just wanted to stay with me?"

He watched Kadaj's face. His youngest brother wasn't the most closed-off face he'd ever met (that would be Sephiroth, though Cloud leapt in surprise at the name. He had almost forgotten all about him), but he certainly didn't wear his heart on his sleeve. Though they weren't closely blood related, Kadaj had picked up on Cloud's sensitivity to other people, able to judge people's moods at a glance, with all the proper human reactions at all the right times. Now, Cloud had to watch closely to distinguish his brother's warring emotions: first, surprise in the widening of those eyes just slightly; and then the mouth tightened imperceptibly, telling him Kadaj suspected he knew...something he wasn't willing to admit to himself yet; and then, that gorgeous face tilted downward, towards the concrete, before coming back up, face devoid of any conflicting emotion.

Those green eyes shot him through, searching his face for any clue, but Cloud was careful, so much more careful. Something had been revealed between the two of them. It was strange how secrets brought people together yet put walls between them as well.

Neither had to say anything. They both knew Cloud had guessed rightly.


	25. All Year 'Round

Trapdoor (Part 25)

by anza (26.12.05)

At exactly two o'clock in the afternoon, an exuberant Zack burst through the door, caroling at the top of his lungs. Cloud's wince showed no more than a twitch of his eyebrow, but he supposed he now owed Yazoo a new mp3 player, as he had finally discovered someone with a worse singing voice than Loz.

"Christmas is over," he intoned flatly, watching his superior with detached interest.

"Nuh-uh!" Zack shook one finger at him, and Cloud resisted the impish urge to snap his head forward and bite it off. "Christmas is twenty-four hours, 365 days a year in THIS company! And you, my boy," he slung an arm around Cloud's shoulders, "have received a very nice present from Santa Zack this year. You see, the Board has agreed to accept your proposal. Time for Production to get their butts into gear!"

From the corner of his eye, Cloud watched as Kadaj gave him a _look_.

He had thought it over, and decided to stay. He wanted to know why the Turks wanted him now, when they could have snatched him almost a decade ago. Zack -

- cavorted around the table once, singing an improvised "Congratulations!" song, and then flicked the pen out of his hand. Pulling him to his feet, he gave an exaggerated motion with his hands to Kadaj, who watched the proceeds with stunned eyes from the safety of the door. "Just gonna borrow your darling guardian for a bit, alright?" He threw back his head and laughed, and while the leery "respectable" side of Cloud reeled in horror, the vacationing, timidly easygoing side of Cloud laughed along.

Apparently it'd been all planned, security waving them both easily through. Nibelheim was still covered in snow, dirty gray and black clumps of it solidifying into ice. Cloud accidentally slipped on one, arms and legs waving helplessly before Zack hoisted him out of danger. There was one second where Cloud thought, if he was sure Zack swung _that way_, he would have kissed him without hesitation. But Kadaj's pretty face - because it WAS pretty, it just wasn't all Cloud was after - floated up, and his heart gave that familiar lurch, and he knew Zack, if interested, would have to hang on a little while longer.

They sat down in a cafe, bustling with people on late lunch breaks, and ordered coffee and cake. Zack stared out of the window, smiling, brown eyes faraway in thought that Cloud was loathe to disturb him out of. If he was going by appearances alone, Zack looked nothing like a Turk. The worst Cloud could call him so far was "annoying", but the best he could call him was "merry". Even "gallivanting", if he was particularly verbose at the time. He knew Zack had a dark side - but he also could see Zack had accepted it, and didn't let it rule him. His strength was precisely why Cloud wanted to stay, though he wasn't about to admit it - it had just been a long, long time since he felt this much uncertainty in his future.

"So howzit going, Rowe? Other than the proposal getting accepted, that is." Zack's eyes swung towards him, and Cloud had the sudden feeling he was being x-rayed, examined under fluorescent headlights while strapped to a hospital table.

"Fine, I guess." Cloud couldn't hold that intense gaze.

"Still going after Kane?" The smile was lightly teasing now, but there was a vein of seriousness under it that let Cloud know Zack understood his need to get away for a little while.

He was so, _so_ tempted to ask about the Turks. But if Zack wasn't - oh, who was he kidding? There was a ninety percent chance Zack WAS a Turk.

"Only if you are."

Zack's eyebrows waggled. "If you'd let me go anywhere near fifty feet of him with those intentions, I might." Cloud laughed purely at the absurdity of the chagrined look on his companion's face.

It'd seemed a lifetime ago since he'd felt happy. How many weeks had passed? Three? Yet light and happiness were clouded, fuzzy memories shining dimly in the back of his head, like faint footprints in the sand. Kadaj had faced him and said they were working too hard. He had faced himself and admitted he was running away. In the past three weeks, with the names of Yazoo and Loz and the Turks burned into the forefront of his mind, he had burned his candle six feet in the ground. It was almost as if he'd remembered the names of the people important to him, but completely forgotten their faces or the memories behind them.

Cloud Strife was a serious person by nature. But almost a decade of working and doing almost nothing else had taught him relaxing was a positive thing, as long as it didn't take first priority. Little things, like doing katas, going to his favorite coffeeshop in the morning, waking late on weekends, he had to rediscover these things now. He remembered himself - but the shock of being pursued by the Turks -

- "Hey." Zack waved a hand in front of his face. "Earth to Rowe. Rowe my man, come in...the food's getting cold, if you don't eat it fast, I'll eat it for you." The blond twitched in annoyance and began to dig into his food. The dark-haired President gave a chuckle and followed suit.

It was surprisingly easy to make small talk, especially with Zack. He asked inconsequential questions, made little snide remarks and upon receiving further details, he cracked jokes. Even straight-faced Cloud laughed outright at some of them. The afternoon wore on forever, the sun dipping slowly behind the thick clouds, turning the city blue with twilight. It wasn't until the streetlamps had been turned on that Zack pounded the table from the hilarity of his latest dig at Luke's slobby office that he threw money on the table, kissed the blushing waitress, and pulled Cloud of the cafe. Cloud was relatively sure he'd never talked with anyone for three hours straight, but with Zack - impossible things became possible. The exuberance, the energy and the enthusiasm he exuded infected everyone, Cloud included. Even lazing in the cafe, everything Zack did was animated and lively, encouraging Cloud to smile and laugh more than he had in ages.

Kadaj was waiting for them when they got home, looking through some files. He greeted them both warmly when they came in, eyes wide at the smile that couldn't seem to leave his oldest brother's mouth. But after a moment, his green eyes were shining with gratitude at Zack for having pumped some life into his favorite nii-san.

Cloud wanted, for not the first time in his life but certainly the strongest it'd been in a long time, that the day would stretch into eternity.

It wasn't until bedtime that the first sign of future trouble arose. Kadaj had just gone in after Cloud and Zack started (not very seriously) debating the idea of Cloud paying rent, since he and Kadaj had technically stayed here for a month. Zack insisted it was not problem - and it wasn't, as Cloud had idly pulled up Zack's salary figures the other day during his search - but Cloud knew this wasn't proper behavior. Either way, he would have to repay Zack's kindness. He didn't want to think about if Zack was a Turk and was currently selling information about Cloud and Kadaj's whereabouts, if this kindness needed repayment in that situation. He quoted figures from the newspaper, but Zack still managed to push him into his room, arguing fiercely that he didn't mind having company in his house, especially not such good-looking company.

Cloud heaved a sigh, leaning against the dresser next the door. The light from the living room streamed through the doorway, lighting only half of Zack's face, giving a haunted look to his features. "I guess you're not gonna give in today," he murmured, but Zack heard.

"I'm not gonna give in any day, Rowe!" Zack's hand was a solid, warm grip against his upper arm, and when he looked up and met those determined bright eyes, the now-SOLDIER Co. employee felt dizzy from the wave of deja-vu and vitality. They stood together there, two men, and Cloud wondered idly that if he stepped forward into those arms, would Zack hold close him until the morning?

The silence behind him was suddenly threatening. Like an electric shock, he turned, remembering Kadaj was there.

His youngest brother had dressed for bed and was pulling the cover silently back, one leg slipping after another into bed. As Cloud watched wordlessly, that lithe body lay down softly with a sigh, and then those dreamlike pale spiders of hands pulled the blankets back up. Like an absent thought that caught on the barbed wire surrounding his mind, he was abruptly feeling/remembering the nights before, with Kadaj so close, back-to-back, close enough so that if he reached out even a little, his youngest brother was there, all green eyes and pliant lips, silver hair as perfect as his night fantasies.

Desire spiraled inside of him, its smoke trapped in his throat. He was choking on a noose of his own making. Zack would be beautiful in bed, all tanned skin and dark hair, his energy undoubtedly would bring him to some higher passion, some higher plateau than he'd ever gone before - but he would be tonight, and the next, and the next, until Cloud gathered enough courage to gouge his own eyes out so he would never have to look at Kadaj ever again. It would be a lie, and after this afternoon, he wasn't going to betray anyone with false emotion.

He looked up into those bright eyes, and recognized the spark of hunger in those depths as one of his own. _But not for you, my friend_, he thought quietly, _not tonight, and hopefully not ever. Tomorrow will be different - if I find out you're a Turk tomorrow, I won't hesitate to run away with Kadaj in tow. But tonight, I'll trust you and your lies of safety, because you reminded me I was once a whole person, and still am._

"Goodnight," he murmured, covering that tanned hand with his own, and then gently detaching it from his arm. "I'll see you tomorrow, Zack." There was no wavering in his voice or in his hands. He stared steadily at his boss, watching at that spark flared in defiance for a moment, then died, suffocated by his withholding of desire. Zack swallowed, smile faltering, but then a wan warmth entered his eyes, and he nodded. Cloud was about to close the door when a hand shot out and caught it. Zack's bright eyes peered into the lighted crack from the living room.

"Rowe?" The blond moved into view, puzzled. "Do you know anything about Item 523?"

----------

"We want you to become a Turk," Tseng said. The handsome Wutaian paced the floor between the coffee table and the head of the stairs, seemingly addressing himself more than Cloud.

"No." Cloud's answer was flat and final.

He glanced at Sephiroth's wary green eyes, and then at Tseng's inscrutable black ones. They were different, and yet the same. Both were Turks; both were the enemy. Something in Cloud died at the thought. These people, the same people he interacted with every day, wanted him to become dangerous, wanted him to do things that were wrong. How could he? How could he when he had three boys to be an example for?

"Do you know who Kadaj is?"

"The youngest son of three sons. The son of Hiyoumi Nakayama and Yone Helsinki." His eyes pressed Tseng to deny the next statement: "A product of love that, due to fortuious circumstances, fell into my custody."

The Wutaian smiled faintly, so fleeting an expression Cloud almost missed it. "That was not what I was trying to say." _But you implied it_, the blond thought, simmering, and all of them knew it. "I asked, did you know Kadaj's father was the right hand man of the previous godfather?"

Cloud managed to keep his face perfectly calm, though his eyes blazed. His mind scrambled for something to say, coming up with nothing, and then filed the statement into the back of his mind. It could be a lie. But deep inside of his heart, Cloud knew it was true, because he was too far up on Shin-Ra Company to threaten idly, and that if the Turks were really going to threaten to take away his brothers, they would need ample incentive. _Leverage_, Cloud gritted his teeth._I will not be trapped!_

"Certainly you know Sephiroth is a Turk." His adoptive older brother had the shame to look away from him. "Now, your duties as a Turk would include working with the sales sector of our armament sales. Right now Reeve is in charge of it, but he wants to switch to the intimidation sector. We'll start you out with just rifles - not a problem, I hope?"

But Cloud was already making up an escape plan.

----------

How could he have forgotten Zack was a Turk?

The problem wasn't that he forgot; he never forgot Zack was a Turk. But like the names of Yazoo and Loz that had lost their meanings, the word Turk had lost its meaning after he'd repeated a million times in his head. It had simply faded into a black stain, seemingly impenetrable and incomprehensible. As he slid into bed, hand feeling for Kadaj's, he berated himself for forgetting what was precious to him. He couldn't possibly think he had outrun the Turks, though he could hope. He couldn't believe Zack wasn't a Turk and a threat to his and Kadaj's safety. Sooner or later he had to leave once danger made itself apparent, and he was thinking now, as he had many times in the last three weeks, that maybe it was better to risk living elsewhere. He couldn't be completely free of suspicion in any other place, and though SOLDIER Jeans Co. had iffy practices like Shin-Ra Company and probably every other corporation, he knew he should move somewhere else. There was no hope he would find employment devoid of shady practices, but it wasn't safe, he could feel it...

Kadaj squeezed his hand once as if to ask, _What's wrong?_

Cloud looked over at his brother. Snow was falling silently, and the silhouettes of snowflakes from the window spread over the hardwood floor and crept partway up the bed. Dark shapes spiraled down over Kadaj's face as Cloud watched, unable and unwilling to say anything. Green eyes fairly glowed in the dark, tracing the curve of his face, the slope of his nose, the lax curl of his lips. The moment was so quiet and peaceful that Cloud was content to do nothing.

He tried to say it with his eyes, knowing there was no such thing as telepathy, and that Kadaj wasn't related to him anyway. He tried to say that he was a fool, that he had forgotten what was important but that he'd remembered now, that he loved Kadaj in a way a brother never should, that the trapdoor was still lying there under the bed even if they couldn't see it. He tried to say he was sorry. But he was sure his brother only saw him thinking deeply, looking at him as if he was afraid his silver-haired happiness would disappear in a confused maelstorm of Turks and mafia and blood.

_I have a responsibility_, he tried to say. _Maybe sometime in some other world, I'd love you until kingdom come and trumpets sound, but here, surrounded by uncertainty, I've got to keep you safe._

_Any indiscretion could be the death of both of us._

But Kadaj's green eyes blinked, eyebrows tilting in a frown, and Cloud knew he didn't understand.


	26. With the Eyes of a Saint

Trapdoor (Part 26)

by anza (26.12.05)

He remembered the taste of peanut butter cookies in his mouth. He remembered Kadaj's smile that night, an expression with a happiness that rippled through him like waves. Cloud had lived the first of his childhood in uncertainty, and the second in cool detachment. The time between the end of that and now was a soupy mess of colors and comments that looked like he'd lived them before, but _felt_ as if he'd never been there. _Where had it all go wrong?_, he wanted to ask, to scream to the sky, but the question remained festering in cavity where his heart should be. Acidic and poisonous, he poked at it when he felt particularly masochistic (which, alarmingly, was quite often), twisting away at the pain, burying himself deeper in his work.

Kadaj, the sweetest glint of release at the end of the tunnel. His hand holding his brother's every night without fail, no matter if Cloud was turned away from him, crushed by the weight of his own helplessness, or quietly watched him in the dark that glowed with shared remembrances between them. His youngest brother, the closest to him and yet so far from what Cloud wanted him to be, so far from what he knew would be the completion of their hearts and minds and bodies. He knew it wasn't the time to give in to the lure of that trapdoor, and that even if they somehow emerged from this alive, he would have to fight to keep that wall between them.

But his youngest brother, the star attraction of Cloud's most feverish dreams, haunted him during the day. His silence coupled with his sympathetic eyes followed him everywhere, eyeing him protectively. Cloud knew in this endeavor, Kadaj wasn't his little brother - he was Kane Snape, unrelated to him, a fugitive from the mafia like Cloud was. In the barest sense, Cloud could trust Kane, a desperate man as much as he was, to take to his instincts and flee if the blond was ever caught.

Kadaj would escape, even if it cost Cloud his life.

He had a promise to give to Kadaj, like the one his mother gave him.

----------

As a child, he had stared up at adults with the eyes of a saint.

Before any other lesson, he knew what a gun sounded like. All of its sounds: when it was dropped, when the safety was turned off, when the safety was turned off, when the trigger was pulled, when it struck flesh, when it broke a bone. The room his mother and him occupied was right next to one of the interrogation rooms. He didn't remember it in images, but words and feelings, knowing it happened though he couldn't see it anymore. Sometimes the tortured agony reached deep into the night. At first Cloud was scared, and then once the room began to be used more frequently, he found he could sleep through them.

She rarely had time for him, his mother. During the day he flipped through the books and puzzled out the words. Things he didn't understand, he read over until he did. When his mother brought a blank book and pencils, he wrote in it hesitantly, and then eagerly. There was a story about a goat who lost its way that he never finished, and one about a four-leaf clover a girl wished on that brought her the exact opposite of what she wanted, and about a blanket that ate little kids. Sometimes he copied just words into the book, especially the words he didn't understand. It wasn't until later that he realized all the passages he didn't understand were the sex scenes in the romances.

Takecarers were few and far in between. There was a woman who didn't speak Continental with a plump face and frightened eyes, another woman who slapped his cheeks when he cried, another woman who was shot the third day she was there caught looking through his mother's jewelry box. He had told her to stop because there were cameras, but she hadn't listened, just shoved him away. Two minutes later, she was backed up against the opposite wall from where she'd pushed him. Nobody thought to cover Cloud's eyes when they shot her.

He was scared at first, especially when his mother told him one night that death was forever, that it was a blackness beyond imagination, unescapable and inevitable. _Guns and knives and old age can cause it_, his mother had told him. But after he saw his takecarer killed before him, he realized it was ordinary, and that people died every day. It was a normal occurence. From the shootings on the street below him to the shots ringing out next door, death couldn't possibly be more empty than his own life.

Sometimes he talked to himself, had imaginary conversations. His mother was worried in her own detached way, but he didn't realize until later that some of his habits weren't normal. Every word he spoke and read had come out of books. He didn't arrange his books neatly because he didn't know he had to. He didn't know he was easily reading books for people three or four times his age. He didn't know much of anything except for four gray walls, a chipped wooden dresser tilting to the right because it was missing two legs, and the creaky bed of two mattresses stacked on top of each other. Most nights he slept alone. Other times his mother staggered in so late the top of the horizon was turning pale yellow with the rising sun. When he tried to ask her why she was so late, she slapped him.

He had only seen one godfather before, the one his mother later betrayed, the one that loved her. Dimly he remembered it had been late, and the moon had soared high in the sky when he barged into their room drunk, his mother clinging helplessly to his arm. Cloud retreated to the corner of the room, farthest from them. Words were said, but in the end he pushed her down onto the mattresses. Calmly he stopped panicking and settled down in his corner. The moonlight streamed down right onto the godfather's sweaty back as he pushed and twisted and writhed. His mother's gasped sounded pained, but she hadn't called for him, so he remained there in the shadows.

It looked painful and altogether too messy. In his mind, Cloud told himself to stay away from love if it was that painful and messy.

Later he would know love was painful and messy, but for completely different reasons.

----------

The search came up blank. There was simply no such thing as "Item 523" anywhere on the net.

Cloud had even checked the company policy, but everything in there was a "rule", not an "item". Simply put, all the combing of the net wouldn't provide him with anything. And unless he resharpened his hacking skills, he probably wasn't going to find out anything from his computer. Not to mention it was too easily tracked - which mean if Zack was looking over his cookies, he would realize Cloud had found nothing.

But the problem was, other than within the company itself, Cloud had no leads. Something had to come from inside SOLDIER Jeans Co. itself. He still had the bank account numbers, but he was loathe to pry that deeply into someone's privacy - not to mention he was afraid of what he might find. He was pretty sure there wouldn't be a direct path to Zack's door...but all the same, he didn't want to look, didn't want to know the truth if that WAS the truth.

He steeled himself and thought of Kadaj. But his hand still hovered over the mouse, hesitating, deliberating: _Is there no other way?_

_No_, the calm, practical voice of survival told him. It was the same voice that told him to run to the other house, to follow his mother's promise, to keep Kadaj at arm's length, and to throw Seph away when he became a Turk. It was the only voice that had ever been completely right. Who cared if Zack was a nice guy? Who cared if he made Cloud laugh? Who cared if he held Cloud when he broke down?

_You don't_, that voice told him. _If he turns out to be a Turk, you'll have to get Kadaj out of here._

It was a voice that only spoke truth.

And like all his previous misfortunes, Cloud swallowed its bitterness.


	27. If I Was A Girl, Would You Date Me?

Trapdoor (Part 27)

by anza (28.12.05)

It wasn't even in his jurisdiction. But it'd gone on for three weeks and it was time to take action. Production seemed to agree, and Company Security waved him through, so Cloud concluded that by the end of the week, he was going to Wutai to take a closer look at who the hell was bribing the police.

The factory with the most smuggling was, appropriately and obviously, in Wutai. It wasn't _in_ Wutai proper, in a gray no-man's zone created after the last Continent-Wutai War. It must have been hell for Zack or whoever was President before him to secure that land, since it was relatively lax on production rules - that is, assuming Zack went through legal channels. Bribes were useful everywhere, as Cloud found during his ascent to the head of the Shin-Ra Company Sales Department.

Inside, his insides seemed determined to twist themselves into a soupy mess. The morning he awoke to find Vincent absent from his bed, he'd called every number he knew, every joint they frequented together, every place they'd ever watched a movie, eaten, slept in - every number in Costa Del Sol, Midgar, Nibelheim, Cosmo Canyon, all to no avail. Vincent had disappeared in the whirl of bodies on the street, even with his striking height and distinctive looks. There was only one place he could have gone to that Cloud couldn't reach: Wutai.

Wutai, his home, the motherland Vincent spoke of rarely but fondly of. Cloud didn't know where to start in Wutai - there only a handful of Valentines, he knew that, but he also knew "Valentine" wasn't a Wutaian name, and thus NOT the name Vincent would go by. If Vincent didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be. It was during this time Cloud feverishly flew through Wutaian classes at the local community college, shooting to the top of his class with his superb pronunciation and lightning (at least to all the other students) reading speed. His use of idioms, especially ones with no Continental translation, was amazing to his instructors. But in the end, there was simply too much of Wutai to ask. He couldn't leave; Kadaj was eleven and on the verge of getting his Ph.D., he couldn't leave when that boy needed him here to cheer him on. And so the dream of ever finding Vincent crumbled like an eroding statue, a chipped and imperfect memorial of what had once been the most exciting time in Cloud's life.

But three days before departure, Cloud wasn't thinking of Wutai or Vincent. He and Zack lounged outside of the dressing room, Cloud raising an eyebrow at the frilly pink confectionary Zack planned to buy ("I'll wear it just to shock people at work - they can't talk back to me anyway! It'll be my tango shirt! It'll set a new record at that place!") and then at his own modest, dark-colored pickings. Vincent had changed his life, but not like Zack had. Zack wormed his way into every aspect of Cloud's life - his clothing, his food, his entertainment, telling him to always try new things. He managed to avoid some of the crazier ones (like the suggestion to go skydiving on Sunday; Cloud wasn't sure if Kadaj was up to pushing his dead body in a wheelchair to work the next day) or the more disgusting ones (tarantulas, while roasted and slathered in A1 sauce, might look like demented pork ribs, but the blond was willing to bet they tasted _nothing_ like them). Now, almost a month into his stay, he couldn't imagine a life without the bright cheeriness of his boss.

Suddenly the snap of cloth announced Kadaj was done. Both of them turned to see what the teen had put on this time - and Cloud's jaw fell open in shock.

"Well," his youngest brother twirled once, "what do you think?". Cloud tried - _tried really, REALLY hard_ - not to ogle Kadaj's ass. Somehow it seemed... _bigger_. He blinked and focused on a point right past Kadaj's right shoulder instead, hoping there was no blush on his face. Oh, who the hell was he kidding?

Zack gave his youngest brother a half-lidded lookover, half-smirking at what he saw. "I think you make a very beautiful woman, Kane." Flirtingly he held out his hand, and the silver-haired secretary took it with equal coquettishness. Cloud was almost - _almost_, because this was Zack - shocked when his dark-haired boss licked his lips and brushed the bangs out of Kadaj's eyes to lean close to the pale shell of one ear. "Pretty enough to eat, sweetheart. I don't suppose you're free tonight?"

Kadaj lounged in the loose circle of Zack's arms, so comfortably Cloud had to gulp. He saw himself in Zack's arms, not his youngest brother! Heavens, Zack was even older than Cloud was! Unbidden a tendril of jealous snaked up to tighten around his heart. But it receded with Kadaj's next comment: "You can try, but I've already got somebody in mind, Zack."

"Oh?" Was it just him or did Zack's gaze shift ever so slightly in his direction for a moment?

"Yeah." That voice was cool, without inflection - a sure sign Kadaj was trying to hide something. If Yazoo hadn't told him, Cloud would have been wondering even now what Kadaj had to hide. "Or you could try to get through Rowe." That was met with chuckles and a real, chagrined, pleading look from Zack thrown in the blond's direction. "I said _try_. But I'm sure Rowe will kick your ass."

Zack looked over him appraisingly. Cloud felt his insides turn simultanuously into ice and into mush. He was being checked out. He hadn't been checked out since...well, since Vincent. And Vincent was a long time ago.

He couldn't help the bright flush that spread up his face, and ducked his head in embarrassment. He turned to leave - what could he say? Did any social decorum provide responses to being looked over? "I'm gonna check out the CD section," he muttered so low only he could hear it, and panicked, started in a random direction, and almost ran towards the electronics sign once he saw it.

Why the _hell_ was Kadaj dressed in girl's clothes anyway?

"C'mon, Rowe, don't be mad!" Kadaj and Zack caught up with him as he paid for his new clothes (a soft green pullover, a dark blue button-up business shirt, a conservative white-and-black classically patterned tie, a slightly thicker jacket than the one he'd been toting around) and his CDs (a few rock ones he knew Kadaj would enjoy, a piano concerto by a player he'd been searching for since he heard him last winter, and a jazz one he could plug in when he was particularly feeling the need to block out the rest of the world). Zack dumped his purchases on the conveyor, grabbed Kadaj's and piled his on top of THAT, and then roughly shoved Cloud out of the way. The blond blinked and didn't realize what Zack was doing until the president smartly swiped his credit card and signed the electronic signature pad with a flourish.

"HEY!" Cloud rarely raised his voice, but he was really fuming. He'd been put under the proverbial spotlight, and embarrassed, and forced to retreat. Zack _knew_ he wasn't good with talking or hanging out with other people. He knew he was being childish, lashing back at Zack like this, but he was so flustered he couldn't think. "YOU'RE the one who gives me my salary! And there's certainly enough to buy everything here, so why -"

Zack waved his protests aside with a flick of his hand. "Nonsense, Rowe -"

"WHAT'S MY SALARY FOR if you won't even let me PAY FOR MY OWN STUFF!"

With a teasing grin, Zack winked at him. _Dammit, I **must** stop blushing because Zack is making suggestive gestures_, Cloud pounded into his head. _It's not even the first time he's shown interest in me! I really must be repressed._ "Why," _damn that voice!_, "it's for Kane's enjoyment, of course! For movies, girls, booze -"

"He's _nineteen_, not twenty-one, Zackary!"

"Which makes it all the more adorable!"

Cloud grabbed his bags before Zack could carry them all himself - he could be a pack horse if Zack could swipe his shiny credit card - and retorted, "What part of throwing up and getting a hangover is cute again?" He watched Kadaj check his own bags and then stepped in for a closer look. "You actually BOUGHT the girls clothes! _WHY!_"

Sweetly his brother turned to him and flashed a disarming smile that managed to catch Cloud off-guard every time. "I'm turning gay and crossdresser, Rowe! Aren't your proud of me?"

"You bought them because you look good in them." Cloud couldn't help but deadpan that one.

"Why shouldn't I buy them? Don't you think I look good in them?" There was something deeper in those eyes when he said that, something Cloud wouldn't have caught if he didn't know what Kadaj wanted already.

_"He wants you."_ Yazoo spelled it bluntly for him.

_"Was it just that you wanted to stay with me?"_ Words out of his own mouth and shown clearly on his brother's face.

He shifted his bags almost uncomfortably. "You do look good in them. But we shouldn't be wasting money on things you won't wear." An adequate evasion for such a question. They made their way to the car which, Cloud reflected sadly, was nothing like his Fenrir.

Like so many things, he missed the purr of the engine under his legs, the strength and the sensation of flying he had when he rode it. A fleeting remembrance of Kadaj with him, arms clasped so tightly around his waist as the sparkling ocean rippled just beyond the path, crossed his mind. But that was another life. He was Rowe Christopher now, Cloud-Strife-in-hiding, a fake name but a very real and human person.

His youngest brother's voice broke through his thoughts. Apparently he wasn't ready to let the subject go. "Would you date me if I was a girl in those clothes?"

And that was the million gil question, wasn't it? He stopped in shock, eyebrows pulled together in a frown. Slowly he turned to face his brother, and saw Kadaj had stopped too, face perfectly still, lips not showing anything, but his eyes blazed with forthrightness. He wanted an _answer_. A real one to a question both of them knew he was actually asking.

He wondered where Kadaj could have had such courage when he was such a wimp. Cloud determinedly hid it under a mask of "practicality" - but he knew sometimes risks needed to be taken, risks he wan't willing to stick his neck and heart out for.

Shaking his head to clear it of all thoughts, he focused on how to respond without hurting his brother in the process.

To stall, he dumped his purchases in the backseat and slid in. To his surprise Kadaj threw his on top of those and sat down beside him. He was sure Zack was watching their little conflict, but he was too busy thinking of a reply to care at the moment. Without a word, the president of SOLDIER Co. revved up the car and began driving home. Cloud thanked his lucky stars that Zack understood.

Finally he said this: "No, I wouldn't date you." He looked over at Kadaj as he said, and was surprised to see the flare of hurt and hopelessness in those eyes before it died down to regret and self-incrimination. The surprise he felt came from the proof that Yazoo was right, and that Kadaj actually felt so deeply about him.

_Not now_, he tried to say with his eyes, _but someday, I'll tell you it wasn't unrequited, Kadaj..._

But for now, he ended with, "I wouldn't date you, Kane, because you wouldn't be _you_."

The hope that sprang into Kadaj's eyes was all at once uplifting and painful to watch.


	28. Nothing Mattered More

Trapdoor (Part 28)

by anza (29.12.05)

He was seriously falling asleep where he sat. Rubbing his eyes wearily, he checked the numbers over again from the top. It was close to two in the morning, and he was still at the company. Everyone had left already, except for the night police stationed at each ground floor entrance. Only he remained, running the numbers down his screen, checking and rechecking. His flight was the day after tomorrow. He had to do this now - he'd be working and packing all tomorrow.

The scant handful of bank account numbers dwindled to nothing, one after the other. Though there were certainly abnormally large deposits in each of the Wutaian factory's police accounts, none of them led to Zack, or to any other executive. Yet, the IP addresses showed the deposits had been made in this very building - meaning, unless someone broke into the network, they had to be made by someone in the company with a password. Cloud just couldn't see any connection. Unless i all /i the police were involved with a company-only mafia under Zack's very nose, he couldn't connect these deposits to Zack at all.

Frustrated beyond belief at his own inability and at the late hour, he put both hands against his desk and pushed his chair away from it. Alternating between rubbing the bridge between his eyes and massaging his throbbing temples, he tried to think about it. But unless there was one last clue he was missing, he simply could _not_ incriminate anyone as a Turk or briber of police.

He heaved a loud sigh. Nothing. All that work for _nothing_. Dammit if he wasn't drained and stumped.

A slight cough from the vicinity of the door made him jump. His hand reached instinctively to the gun stuck in the waistband of his pants. Uncomfortable, but at least it succeeded in keeping him awake when he leaned back to take a break. Seconds pounded like hours in his mind. Around the smooth, body-warmed metal, his fingers curled around the barrel.

And then, "Rowe?" The inquiry came softly, fluttering like a dark-winged bird in the darkness.

His hand unclenched. "Kane." It wasn't a question; he'd know that voice even if he hadn't heard it for decades. "Kane, what are you doing here?" His voice was subdued, not softened but simply asking in monotone. He really was far too tired to deal with masks tonight.

"You didn't come home...I got worried. Zack's up waiting too - that is, last time I checked. I had to wake him up three times. He's on the couch in the living room with the light turned brightest, and he still fell asleep." They shared a smile, Cloud feeling it through the darkness. There came the soft pad of footsteps, and his youngest brother melted out of the shadows into view. His pale face looked more wan than usual, and when he shifted he threw back his bangs with one hand. "Rowe, I think you've worked enough today."

Cloud looked at the computer screen, at the records he'd checked and checked again. Of course, it was highly possible someone had changed the records, and hadn't left a trace of it - but then, Cloud really wouldn't know even if he scoured the files. He could go to the bank, make up a lie and check up on all of the owners individually, but there was no time now. Really, he and Kadaj had stayed in Nibelheim far too long...

_Zack._

The dark-haired man appeared immediately in his mind. There was something charismatic about him, something attractive about his boisterous and vivacious company. Cloud knew he'd miss him when he left. Maybe it was just pretend, just beating around the mulberry bush, but the spark in Zack's eyes wouldn't leave the forefront of his mind. Maybe it'd just been for fun, but...he sure hoped it hadn't all been a game. He hoped he wasn't just dreaming up the friendship and understanding he'd built in such a short time.

He straightened the folders on his desk, then slid them into the first drawer. He'd have to come back here in five or six hours, so he could continue right where he left off. Tucking in the papers he wanted securely in his briefcase, he froze at the slight touch that caressed his shoulders lightly, and then began to massage slowly. Instantly he leaned back into that incredible feeling of his muscles unknotting as Kadaj's fingers worked them methodically. For a moment he paused at the memory of Tifa doing the same - but here, in the shadowed, dimly lit circle of lamplight with the darkness all around, the memory flitted away like a wisp of smoke as Cloud found himself becoming bonelessly relaxed. He wasn't sure how long Kadaj worked at his shoulders - he could see those hands in his mind, kneading at the tension, smoothing it away - but he knew that after a while, he stopped, and just put his arms around Cloud.

It was so _right_.

He leaned into the circle of those arms, and just...stopped. Stopped thinking. Stopped feeling. Kadaj offered that security tonight, just for a little while. He was amazed how, even though they were in a completely different time and place, his silver-haired love still knew exactly what he needed at what time. Like now...he needed assurance. The numbers just wouldn't match up. But soon, he wondered if it would matter. He wondered if, by the end of the week, he and Kadaj would be dead.

He wanted to trust Zack, he really did. But feeling his youngest brother's arms around him, tightening for security and support of him, he made up his mind.

----------

Outside, the snow fell. It did every winter without fail, since mankind could remember. And all around the world people worked and slept and ate and _lived_. In the dark of night so deep when all the town slumbered, only Cloud and Kadaj were still up, way up high on the third-to-top floor of the SOLDIER Jeans Co. Headquarters, sharing a moment of peace.

Only they existed in that world of falling snow. Existing for each other. Nothing mattered more.

Cloud could have cried with the simplicity of it.

----------

By the time the next morning dawned, they were asleep back home. The day passed quickly, Cloud walking through a haze of smiles, wishes of good luck, and cups of coffee. Kadaj's eyes appeared more often than not: peering in the doorway, setting down a cup of coffee, stacking scant reports on his desk, and once, laying one fond hand on his beloved nii-san's cheek. It was no small thing that Cloud could feel his love. He cherished it, held it close, bathed in its warmth. All at once he felt naked and yet unashamed because of it. With the absence of Midgar's towering society, Cloud felt a freedom and a recklessness to do whatever he wanted that he hadn't felt since Vincent.

He'd done right. He'd done all he could.

They left for their flight. The Valentine cases stayed behind; this time they both packed their clothes into Zack's roly-bags. With quiet numbness that everyone mistook for tiredness, Cloud checked both their bags for bugs thoroughly, and then they continued on their way. Zack waved them goodbye, his tanned arm faltering a little at the faint, ironic twist in Cloud's mouth.

Kadaj's eyes, so green and so pure. His movements, so fluid they seemed to be water. He was always there, Cloud's shadow, Cloud's support, Cloud's love. The one he'd wanted - and the one he couldn't have. Always, a distraction - but a beautiful, dangerous, and not entirely unwanted one. There was a beauty in holding something and cherishing it...but there was also a beauty in keeping it afar and exquisite in the pain of its distance.

How easily dreams died!

_The end is near_, he thought absently, and then with more concentration. He was resigned. Large things were happening to him that were out of his hands. What could he do to change them?

With his two hands, how could he protect Kadaj?

_The end is near. So let it come._

----------

_Author's note:_

_Trapdoor, unfortunately, stops at chapter 30 - which, as you can see, is only two chapters away. So...expect there to be lots of confusion and final reckoning in the next two chapters. After this comes Omerta, another 30-chapter story I haven't finished yet. Truthfully, all the "D.Gray-Man" fanfiction I've been writing lately is what's been putting that off. I've just discovered an extreme liking to Allen and Kanda and Lavi, those three boys just twist my widdle heart to pieces..._

_Of course, I would adopt Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz too, given the choice. Who wouldn't?_

_--Andrea Weiling_


	29. I Never Trusted You

Trapdoor (Part 29)

by anza (29.12.05)

As soon as the plane left, he went back to the apartment. He wasn't sure if there was anyone following him, or if someone had followed Kadaj onto the plane, but now that it had left, nothing short of discovery at the Wutai City Airport could touch his youngest brother now. Cloud half-expected there to be someone home when he arrived. He had pried the window earlier in the day. The fire escape creaked under his feet as he shifted his weight to the flimsy windowsill. The empty kitchen met his eyes, his and Kadaj and Zack's mugs all neatly propped on the drying rack. Anxiety and regret clutched briefly at his heart and his throat. He closed the window and padded to his and Kadaj's temporary bedroom.

He stared in shock. The two Valentine cases were gone.

All Cloud had now was the gun concealed in his briefcase that he had snuck past the airport security. No clothes but the ones on his back, and way too much money in his wallet. There was nothing to do now - Zack, or the Turks, had his belongings now. His laptop bag had everything he needed, though, everything important was in there. The essential things were all memorized in his head already - the most secure place for anything, he'd found with experience.

He got as far as the train station when briefly, when the crowds parted, he spotted Rude.

Immediately he got on the train, not knowing or caring which one it was, just as long as he escaped the Company Security head. But as he dashed onto the train, he was met face-to-face with another suited man in sunglasses. This one he didn't spare. Instantly the compartment burst into a flurry of fists. It couldn't be long before Cloud was overtaken, forced against the nearest wall with his arms behind him. The feel of cool metal around his wrists and the click of the handcuffs brought his hopes right down on his head. Gritting his teeth, he gradually stopped struggling.

A redhead with two curved tattoos curling under his eyes gave a "Sorry-but-I-gotta-do-this" look at him right before he punched Cloud straight into unconsciousness.

----------

He wasn't sure how long he'd been awake or how long he'd been asleep, but the four gray walls imprisoning him certainly didn't provide any answers. The ceiling was a mishmash hodgepodge of pipes both big and small, overlapping and circling and twisting around each other. Cloud was reminded of his own situation, and of people's fates in this world, circling, knotting, not knowing where they were going but trying to understand with the people around them, clinging to each other for lack of anything else to hang on to.

The sound of the metal door rasping open brought him out of his reverie. Cloud had been thinking for a long time, contemplating everything from the bruise on his cheek to where Kadaj might be now. Undoubtedly Yazoo and Loz would be dragged into this now. He closed his eyes, staring down into his lap. Failure stared at him with his own face. He couldn't hope for the best - he knew better than that, always...

The redhead who'd knocked him out entered first, giving him a nod and an apologetic look. Next was Rude, head shining dimly in the light of one swinging lightbulb overhead. Like a butler, he looked in the door, past where Cloud's vantage point, and announced, "The Godfather."

He didn't know who he was expecting. Tseng, perhaps. Even Sephiroth. Reeve, or Rufus, or Tifa. But when Zack walked through the door, eyes set and face blank, something in Cloud cried out sharply, crumbling into nothing. What friendship? What camaradie? What fun? They had always been enemies from the start.

And Zack had known. Zack, the only person he dared trust even a little for the entire month, was the head of the very organization he'd been trying to avoid.

Cloud laughed, a surprisingly merry sound echoing in the room. Everyone turned to look at him in amazement, but he just sat there, hands handcuffed behind his back, laughing. Maybe they thought he'd gone mad, but in truth Cloud was just very, very happy. Now he knew exactly what he was up against. And he was laughing because he'd let Kadaj escape, right under Zack's very nose.

Zack looked faintly pained when he finished chuckling. "Cloud, I'd rather not make this any more unpleasant than it is." His voice conveyed something Cloud could only describe as nauseousness.

Somehow Cloud couldn't keep the smile from his face. He supposed his mind had already gone out the window with his incoming death, and he just didn't care anymore. "If it's already unpleasant, Zack, then making it a little more painful won't do anything."

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence. Cloud leaned back against the brick of ice that was the wall, and waited for the questioning to begin.

"Where is Kadaj," Zack asked first. A chair was brought in, and the Godfather sat gratefully on it.

"In Wutai by now, I'd imagine. It's only a one-hour flight."

Zack's bright eyes seared him through, as they often did. But now Cloud couldn't feel anything; he identified the emotions in him one by one: anger at Zack, relief for Kadaj, hysteria for himself. Everything coalesced in his head, melting into one giant bubbling pot of confusion that Cloud simply ignored for the time being. Like at so many meetings, he wasn't listening to his emotions, just thinking and analyzing in an impossible situation.

_Well, what do you know_, the sardonic voice in his head told him, _something productive came out of almost a decade at Shin-Ra Company._

"Where is Kadaj headed, then?"

Cloud just smiled.

Zack gave a disgusted, exasperated and altogether tired sound at his response and snapped orders at the redhead and Rude. "Just find Kadaj at the airport. How hard is it to find a silver-haired teen, anyway? Why haven't they found him yet?"

Accusations flew back and forth between the redhead and Rude for a few minutes, all of which Cloud tuned out. His mind was on Kadaj, on his own strange mix of emotions, on the discovery of Zack's true identity.

Finally Zack turned to him and asked, "How did you know?"

"That you were a Turk?" His eyes snapped clear at the question.

Zack seemed surprised he suddenly had Cloud's full attention. "Yes."

And then Cloud smiled again - he couldn't help it. He, calm and serious, couldn't stop smiling. Somehow the thought of him being merry made him smile even wider. "That's just it," he answered, "I _didn't_ know. I guessed. There were plenty of signs along the way, plenty of coincidences. I don't know why you planted them, but I became reasonably sure I couldn't trust you."

"You know in order to research the policemen being bribed in Wutai, I had access to everyone's bank accounts. You must also know I didn't find any trails leading to any of the executives. But even before that happened, I couldn't believe that you weren't involved, so I opted for another plan: to escape as soon as the opportunity presented itself."

"I made that my goal the moment I made the decision to become your Sales Manager."

"I believed you were reasonably sure we would join you when the time came, either by force or by persuasion. You could threaten Kadaj, as he was right there ready to be kidnapped. But you also needed SOLDIER Jeans Co. as your legal front, so you wouldn't put that in too much jeopardy. You would have allowed us to go to Wutai, and undoubtedly under heavy guard so we wouldn't try to escape. But now I've diverted your attention, so that will buy time for Kadaj to escape."

Zack stared at him intently. "So, you never suspected what Kadaj might know of Item 523?"

Cloud shook his head. "I thought it might be something about that. I never asked. I thought it might have been something his father passed onto him, but to me, that didn't matter. All that mattered was getting him out of Nibelheim. Since we accepted your offer, we couldn't run off in the middle, as the entire town is probably chock full of Turks - so I had to develop a way to get Kadaj with or without me off the Continent completely." His eyes stared straight at Zack. "I didn't care what happened to me, as long as Kadaj was safely away."

"So you never knew Kadaj was actually what we were after the entire time?"

He blinked in surprise that Zack would unveil that information in front of him, but then stilled. "No. Even if I did, I still would have bided my time to escape."

A cellphone rang. The redhead snapped it open, frowning. Cloud listened with some satisfaction as everyone argued over not finding Kadaj. Of course they wouldn't find him. He and Kadaj had made sure of that.

"Your mistake was trusting me not to run, and also trusting my fear of Turks," he told Zack once the phone had been put away. His face was emotionless, blank towards...who was Zack to him now? A betrayer? A man after his own goals? An enemy? "You trusted my fatalism on the inevitability of becoming a Turk. Maybe I would become a Turk someday - but my goal has _always_ been to keep Kadaj from becoming one."

Zack sat irritated and motionless, just staring at him. And then finally he asked Rude, "Just how hard is it to find a silver-haired guy at an airport full of Wutaians?"

Cloud grinned.

Zack saw it, and the thought finally dawned in his head. "Damn there're ways around everything," he muttered softly to himself. Cloud watched his face change, snapping quickly to fury, and when Zack threw the chair across the room where it shattered in a million fragments of fury, the blond knew he'd won.


	30. Escape

Trapdoor (Part 30)

by anza (05.1.06)

"Then, you really don't know anything about Item 523."

It seemed they were going to get to the point faster this time. It wasn't Zack himself who conducted his interrogations; they were all done by minor lackeys. Cloud had yet to see the same face twice. He hoped Zack was firing them as quick as they came. This one was a piebald man with a beard who looked more like someone's drunk uncle than an interrogator. Cloud was certainly sure he'd never seen anyone with a beer nose as bad in his life.

Like the questions before this one, he had answered this question before too. "No, I don't know anything about Item 523."

The interrogator leaned forward with a conspiratorial gleam. "What if someone broke into this place to get you out?"

"Then I'd get out."

"What if we used you as bait to lure out Kadaj?" Those glittering rat eyes couldn't be remotely sane.

Like all the others, Cloud had answered this already. "I've told you already, Kadaj won't fall for it. He is a desperate man too, like I am."

Abruptly the chamber door opened. With a dead, very unamused look, Zack strode in alone. The interrogator immediately began sweating, but the Godfather simply uttered a curt, "OUT," and the man scurried out. "And shut the fucking door behind you. Reno, if I've found you've recorded this later, you'll get a death so drawn out you'll be crippled in your old age before I'm done." Sighing, he took the chair the interrogator had taken, grimacing slightly at its too-cushy seat. "How the hell can anyone concentrate when they're sitting in something that could pass for a bed," he grumbled.

Cloud recognized he was trying to get him to open up, but decided returning a jest like that wouldn't hurt. "Maybe that's why you haven't beaten any answers out of me yet," he answered. For a moment they shared wary but real smiles. The blond saw his own tiredness was apparently shared. "Been up reviewing tapes of my pretty face as I answer the same questions?"

To his credit, Zack still had enough energy to shoot him a fully disgrunted look. "You have _no_ idea."

The ex-Sales Manager of two companies dredged up a half-grin from somewhere inside of him. "Oh, I can imagine. I mean, I can imagine you didn't entirely not enjoy it."

The dark-haired man gave him a long look at THAT suggestive remark, and then looked up at the knock at the door. Being the only one of the two of them not strapped to a chair, he opened the door and accepted the two black guitar cases from the nameless legion who bowed and scraped before Zack disgustedly waved him away. Cloud's jaw tightened: they were _his_ guitar cases, his Valentines. The cases Vincent had given him.

Tersely he ground out, "Those had better not be damaged."

Zack spared him a brief, undiscernable look, but instead of answering verbally he swung one of them onto the table and opened it. First to be dumped on the table was a pair of boxers along with a photo album (remarkably undamaged, considering in whose hands it'd been lounging in), followed by a science fiction paperback he'd been in the middle of reading, and then the CDs he'd bought for Kadaj. With a controlled spin, Zack turned the guitar case towards him. Cloud hadn't left anything of importance in the cases; they'd all be in the briefcase, which had a much lower probability of being returned or reexamined in front of his eyes.

Equally tersely, Zack said, "Your tastes run young."

Cloud blinked at the non sequitur. "I have three younger brothers, they provide the music I listen to."

Zack's eyes were carefully blank as he countered, "I was speaking of one particular brother. The youngest one, in fact." Cloud could feel those bright eyes on his face, observing for any reaction, but inside of him there was only a growing coldness, as if ice water had began to fill up the hold of his emotional vessel. "The one you would leave yourself behind to be bait for the mafia for."

He _shouldn't_ have been surprised. Zack wasn't stupid, after all. And as the Godfather...he'd have to have some wits about him. But exposed...it wasn't the same as it had been with Yazoo. Yazoo had been his brother, one he expected would know the family's secrets, and Cloud trusted him with that. Now, from the mouth of someone who shouldn't know, who could use it ruthlessly against him, it was a shock. He had predicted it into his worst case scenarios...but a little part of him twisted in hurt and betrayal at Zack and at himself, for being so weak.

His voice was a harsh, hissed whisper: "What do you want from me?"

----------

Abruptly he remembered.

"Get up," the other boy had said. He clutched his belongings and followed, peeking over his shoulder only once to stare at the warm spot he had just abandoned. There had been no looking back when he ran away from home, but for his little corner of the street, he would miss it, his first taste of independence.

He was brought into a barracks of a sort, three-leveled, with bare rooms that were little more than spare timber nailed together. There were no pipes in the walls or the ceiling; nobody in the building could afford them. Even for the cheap price of five dollars a week, nobody could survive in that shack during one of Midgar's bitter winters. In the summer, the smoldering, sweating heat permeated everything and anything. In the winter, its occupants had either invested in a heater and a large heap of blankets, or they had frozen and had to be pried out of corners at the end of each week.

It was the end of winter. The other boy threw a pink-and-blue quilt at him, which Cloud caught with a squeak. With a rasp of the match, the heater crackled ablaze. The shivering blond inched closer to it, eyes trained on his savior as if he knew he was prey already. The other boy had dark hair and brilliant, almost gold eyes. They alarmed him - they reminded him of a rabid dog on the street that had stolen his bread away from him. Its eyes had been gold too.

Slowly he pulled the quilt over his shoulders and snuggled deeper into the niche between the heater and the wall. Though he could feel the icy wind slithering through the quilt, he rearranged it so there were two layers against the cold, and the heater on the other side. He jumped when a hunk of bread was shoved into his face. Even when the other boy motioned a second time for him to take it, he backed away, until he was flat against the wall, hands scrabbling with the quilt to cover him, to hide him, all the while his little back pushing and pushing back -

- with a crack, he broke a hole through the wall. The room was on the third floor.

The other boy retrieved him with grumbling good grace (and much fear on Cloud's part), scolding him as they trooped back up the stairs. The quilt that had sheltered Cloud before was half-hanging out of the hole he'd made, and he stuttered to a halt at the mess he'd made. The other boy gave him a look before starting to pick up the splinters and throwing them into the heater. With a few nails from the broken-off boards, Cloud managed to block up the hole with the quilt.

They worked silently next to each other, not like young boys at all. After they were done, they spread a quilt in front of the heater, wrapped more quilts around themselves, and ate bread toasted on the top of the heater. It was crunchy and more than a little burnt, but it felt delicious to Cloud.

Shyly he turned to the other boy, eyes searching for some way to convey his gratitude. The other boy just snorted, bright eyes finding their way back to Cloud's blue ones after a minute. Even from their scant interaction, Cloud recognized the glint of kindness under the layers of hardship the other boy hid.

The first thing the other boy really said to him was, "Don't be afraid."

The second thing the other boy told said to him was, "Zack Darklighter." When Cloud blinked in confusion, he clarified with a hesitant grin that spread all over his face as the blond looked on, "That's my name."

----------

"I didn't mean it."

Cloud looked up at the admission with dead eyes. "Mean what?"

"I didn't mean to deceive you."

The blond blinked, and then snorted. "You didn't deceive anyone. I was suspicious of you the entire time. I only believed you halfway. I don't know what you're apologizing for."

Zack sighed. "Lemme rephrase that. I _did_ mean it. The friendship, I mean."

The ex-Sales Manager let that sink in, before meeting the dark-haired man's eyes with a sigh. What could he say to that that hadn't been implied already? "I meant it too. I had fun. So did Kadaj. But in the end, you're still someone I wouldn't want to be friends with." Zack opened his mouth to say something, but Cloud cut him off, "It's alright. I know it wasn't wasted. I know you were judging whether or not I was Turk material."

Zack's mouth shut with a click. Wryly, Cloud smiled. His salvation had always taken second place to Kadaj's safety. How messed up this was, all the players in a game as Cloud stood up against a person he would have given anything to if only he could trust him and continue their little game of make-believe...

"I knew, the moment I took the job offer, that you'd already snared me. But I staged this so Kadaj escape. I never trusted, not even for a moment, that I would be able to do the same."

The line of Zack's mouth was rather strange, Cloud observed. A twist of hesitation, regret, and guilt, perhaps? And then the Godfather stood, rounded the table, and unlocked his handcuffs. Cloud massaged his wrists, knowing what was coming next.

Still, when Zack cut open his hand, it hurt. As in, more than physically. The blood that spilled into his palm was half his mother's, his mother who had died tell him to run away, because the Turks would kill him too if he stayed.

All his running had been for naught. He was still caught. He had been born into this world, a world where needy people were shot in front of children, where screams rang deep into the night, where mothers prostituted themselves to bald, sick old men who yearned for their lost youth. Cloud had been born into this dirty world.

Zack cut open his own palm and slapped them together in a mess of blood and slit tissue. "Don't be afraid," the dark-haired man, a stunning fast-forward of Cloud's earlier memories.

Kadaj had escaped in a momentarily lapse of Zack's suspicion.

Now all that remained was for Cloud to escape. A daunting idea, since the people who were born into the mafia never grew out of it. That was one particular rule he knew, and had tried, and had never overcome.

"You're a Turk now, Cloud. No one can hurt you."

Escape. That was Cloud's goal now.

The coldest smile glittered on his lips like the worthless kindness buried beneath layers of Zack's criminal mind.


End file.
